The Rallax Operation
by Al B Dickerson
Summary: Not only had the Graff Vynda-K spectacularly failed to kill them on Ribos, Garron & Unstoffe found themselves in possession of his cruiser and all its contents. A ship packed with treasure? All they had to do was sell it and they'd be set for life, right? Nothing could go wrong, even with the mysterious Doctor returning...


The Rallax Operation

"I'd retired, gentlemen, and not a moment too soon. I was tired from all that running and work was doing my head in. I was ready for a rest.

There was all that travel, which I didn't mind. I like a good cognit, but the quiet time between planets always made my companion cross and impatient to be somewhere, anywhere. So I'd just find a quiet place and try to ignore his muttering.

Then there were all those new worlds. It's always interesting, but I often wished we weren't there to work but just to gander. Ah, but there's always something wrong. There's planets where you got a backache from the gravity, or the air smelled of your Uncle Gurney's dirty feet, or the local micros were off your inject's definitions so you'd have swollen eyes and a runny nose for your entire visit. Of course, this last only happens on pleasant worlds with compatible ladies. Go to the quarantined swamp moon of bug planet Infestia and you'd feel great."

I'm sorry, but you already look puzzled. Let me put this in context for you.

They'd taken the Doctor first, assuming he was our leader. The princess napped while we waited and I smiled when she shifted in her sleep and rested her head on my shoulder. I suppose I drifted off myself, because I was alone when they came for me.

I was marched down a short corridor to what I assumed was an interrogation room. The Doctor and the princess were seated off to the side and three of our captors stood in a semi-circle around an empty chair. One of my guards said, "Here is the final prisoner," and departed.

The leader turned a bland face to me and said, "Please sit comfortably".

I glanced at the Doctor and he winked and tapped his watch. I drew a deep breath of the stuffy air and sat.

"Hullo," I said, "I understand you have a few questions?"

A human would have have blinked.

"Why, yes, of course. While we regret infringing on your personal freedom we must insist on your complete cooperation."

"Certainly. The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, eh?"

"It is most urgent."

"Well, I'd better get started, then."

"Yes. Place your hand on the verifier, please, and state your true name for the record."

"I am Peter Gulliver Unstoffe of Darwin Colony."

"Verified. How long have you been an associate of the Graff Vynda-K?"

May the saints preserve us from the obstinacy of robots and logicians.

"I have never been an associate of the Graff. We've already been over this a dozen times. Look, the only way to make you understand is if you let me tell you how we all came to be here. Then maybe you'll believe us and we can stop wasting time. Shouldn't we be finding this thing you're looking for so we can avert disaster? Just stop asking questions and let me talk."

"You will be brief and to the point?"

"Of course."

"Then you may proceed."

So I relaxed, collected my thoughts and told them all about my impending retirement.

That's when the leader, whose name-tag read, 'Hello! I am Bob Sunny Day! How may I serve you?', interrupted.

"A thousand pardons, Mr. Unstoffe, but given the potentially calamitous outcome of recent events, may we ask that your narrative be rather less digressive?"

"What? Oh, sorry. Garron used to say I rambled too much."

"We mean no offense, we assure you. It's simply that we are unable to determine the importance of your prior travels, interesting though they may be. To regrettably be blunt, is this relevant?"

"Yes, it is relevant. I mean, you fellows don't seem inclined to take us at our word, so I have to tell you the whole story with all the details. If any of us are going to survive this mess you need your property and the Doctor needs his. If we can't convince you we're your friends and not your enemies, well, you know what's going to happen. The Doctor says we have time, so I'm going to tell this story the way I want.

"Now let me get on with it."

"Very well. Taking into account the potentially vital nature of your narrative, you may get on with it in the manner you prefer."

"Okay, then. Anyway, the best and worst thing about traveling was the natives. Always a roll of the dice. All those new people with their strange customs, some of them thinking their way is the only way and everyone else is a deluded alien to be patronized or executed. Or they'd be primitives who'd never heard of aliens and you'd have to pretend to be one of them. Sometimes they'd be nice, you know? That made it hard to work. But usually they were mean, and that made it satisfying."

"What is the nature of your business, Mr. Unstoffe?"

"Eh? What was our business? Oh, um, real estate. My master Garron was a real estate agent and I was his apprentice. We found and sold buildings, space stations, cities and sometimes even planets to our clients. It was good money, usually, but sometimes it was unreliable. A client would change his mind, or the locals would object to their sacred landmark being owned by an offworlder or the native bureaucrats would suddenly materialize and start waving permits and licenses and local tax decrees...

I can see you don't understand. I wouldn't expect you to, you being robots and all. No offense. I can see you're fine robots, but I doubt you're programmed for greed. Greed is what it was all about. "Greed spins the galaxies," Garron used to say.

It works like this: The client wants his property but doesn't want to pay a single opek more than his personal appraisal tells him its worth. We want his money and at minimum operating cost to ourselves. And the galactic and local governments see money exchanging hands and say, "Hey! We'll have some of that!" like the unconscionable extortionists they are and by the time we've fired rockets our millions of credits are barely enough to cover our modest expenses."

"Is there not a component missing from your business plan? What of the owner of the property? The party designated, 'the seller'?"

"What's that? The seller? Oh, yes, of course, the _seller_. You mean the owner of the property? How could I forget them? They got their cut, too. Everybody got a cut.

That's why we traveled so much, you see. It's the government and their stranglehold on the free market. Institutional greed, wringing profit from the independent businessman. Greedy buyers and of course sellers. We had to keep working just to stay afloat, year after year, voyage after voyage, world after world.

And then we made it. Our big score. The likes of which honest realtors like ourselves can only dream. Due to the generosity of a grateful client we found ourselves the legal, new owners of the _Indomitable Prince_, a squarish, ugly cruiser packed with lawfully won plunder, as defined by the Levithian Martial Codex.

By the way, you comprehend your mistake, don't you? Do you understand, now? The ship was the property of the Graff, true, but then the ship legally passed on to Garron. When you asked Garron if the ship was his he was speaking true but he wasn't confirming he was the Graff. Do you understand? Garron is not the Graff."

Bob Sunny Day silently conferred with the others. I couldn't hear them, of course; it was all head-to-head, but someone had had the bright idea of giving them body language. So it was like watching a holo with the sound off. Bob What A Deal and Bob Sunny Day were agitated, endearingly animated like veteran Rift Users. Bob Name Your Poison stood still and just looked back and forth as the others talked, like an attendee at a ping-pong match.

Then Bob What A Deal turned to me and stated, "Please forgive our apparent distrust but this remains to be determined. The person you refer to as Garron identified himself as owner of the Graff's vessel. Our boarding party was rendered unable to correlate our archival footage of the Graff with your Garron. Therefore the matter is not closed. As we have said, all you must do is present this Garron or his remains and we will be satisfied.

"The verifier seems happy with it," I said.

He frowned in a blandly apologetic manner. "I'm afraid the verifier's circuits are still preoccupied with the Doctor's testimony. He was most excessively forthcoming, though I note he is pleasingly silent now. The verifier will render its verdict in time.

"Now, please continue."

"Where was I? Oh, the plunder!

My head still spins at the thought of it. Cyrrhenic silk banners, intricately woven by the trained spiders of the Boric delta. The Singing Spear of Sven Venison. The personal battle robes of the Gyronese Emperor of Contention. Choice volumes from the psychic library of the artificial rings of Thoomba. And the art! There was a Gleick, a Vincent van Breda, two Johnsons and a Giggins. All this, mind you, in the very first compartment we peeked into.

Garron clapped my shoulder and I cringed. I'd been shot there that morning, just before the cave-in. I guess I should add that Garron took a couple souvenirs himself. I knew he'd milk them for all thy were worth. Anyway-

He tutted apologetically and carefully clapped my other shoulder and said, "My boy, this is it. My days of struggle are behind me. With the credit's I'll get for this lot I'll be able to return to Earth and _buy_ Hackney Wick! What am I saying? I'll buy the Earth! I wonder if it's for sale?"

"I'm sure you'll find a willing seller," I said.

"That's the spirit!" he said, "Oh! A comment. Don't worry, lad! I'll see that you are well provided for. This ship, for instance, should fetch you a princely sum in scrap."

"Garron, scrap?"

"Well, there are those who may have taken exception to the Graff's activities, after all. One can hardly slap a coat of paint on her and expect to sell her on the market. I expect there would be questions." He frowned. "So many tiresome questions."

"You may be right." I said. "You know, Garron..."

"I know that tone. Please refrain from thinking, boy."

"Some of these treasures meant a lot to their owners..."

"We are not giving anything back!"

"Give back? You wound me, Garron! I thought perhaps a few discreet inquiries as to the possibilities of rewards for the safe return of certain state treasures..."

"Oh, I see! My apologies. I thought you were going soft on me again. Let me think on it, boy. You may be right, but there's something to be said for dumping this junk in one big lot and letting someone else deal with the details. The question is, who can we trust? There's the Smith-Kazar's on Fulcrum 5..."

"No, Gentile Smith said he'd put a rake in your skull the next time he saw you, remember?"

"Oh, that's right. We'd best not go there. What about the Castigones?"

"That's a wonderful idea, Garron. Thinking of visiting Henco's daughter while we're there?"

"Oh, the alluring yet clingy Belinda! I see your point." He pondered a moment. "I wonder how our boy's doing?"

"Garron, I once saw Henco eat a fried Dalek. Let's think of someone else."

"You'll get no argument from me. Oh! There's Shintaccus on Globe 22..."

"Bounty on both our heads."

"Curses! The Grindovinian estate? I hear they're going places."

"Yes, they all went to maximum security."

" Phestus Phobos! There's always the market on Phestus Phobos..."

"Where they'll slit our throats at the merest hint of the extent of our treasures."

"The duty-free depot on Happy Harbor?"

"Infiltrated and liquidated by you-know-who."

"You don't mean..."

"The legendary Mongoose himself."

The Mongoose, by the way, was Alliance Security's greatest undercover agent. No one had the slightest idea who he was but everyone feared drawing his attention. Anyway...

Garron sank into a nearby chair, defeated.

"Oh, Unstoffe! We simply don't know enough honorable criminals! Where are we to dispose of this junk without being killed for it?"

Bob Name Your Poison spoke for the first time. "Excuse me. Did you just admit to consorting with criminals?"

"What's that, Bob? No, I didn't say 'criminals'. Must be a faulty translator. You should get that looked at; might be a sign of serious malfunction. 'An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure', my old Da used to say.

"I said, 'antiquities dealers', of course. Oh, don't give me those blank looks. Antiquities is a cut-throat business. It's almost as bad as real estate. To continue?

"Garron went off to mutter. I double checked the docking clamps on the ships and set the cruise control on our ship. We left the odd orbit of Ribos with no destination in mind. I wished old Binro was with us and hoped the gods of Ribos weren't religious. After all, surely they knew the stars weren't ice crystals.

I turned my thoughts to practical matters. Garron would think of something eventually so I might as well do something useful.

I started the inventory of compartment one, growing more excited with every find. The Graff's taste in treasures ran to the martial – no surprise there – but it must be said: the man had taste. This wasn't a random cache of loot; these items were artifacts, treasures that had history. I could happily have rummaged through the collection until the end of my days.

But business is business. It would be useful to know what the items would fetch, so I sent a few discreet inquires over the hypercable. After the first few responses I revised my opinion of the Graff. He may have had taste but he was a fool. The contents of this compartment alone would have bought him an army; he never needed Ribos and its jethrik mines at all. And this compartment was one of eight.

Gentlemen, I am an unsophisticated man. Simple as my face, as Garron said. The realization that I was on board a ship carrying the greatest treasure of the last two-hundred centuries overwhelmed me. I left the compartment, half-meaning to tell Garron what I'd discovered but really just wandering in a daze, when I met him coming the opposite way.

He was pale as a skee-goat and as expressionless as one of the Mikeda masks I'd left in the hold. We met in the hall, exchanged blank glances and stumbled on our separate ways. I looked back from the entrance of compartment 2 and saw him gazing at me. Suddenly his face took on the crafty aspect I knew so well. He was up to something. All right. I wouldn't tell him about my findings, then. His eyes narrowed, but he left without a word.

He'd discovered something; that was obvious. But he'd looked shocked in a way I hadn't seen since he learned it was a capital crime to drop melons on Agricorp 7. What could possibly have kindled this reaction? I hadn't explored far when I saw my first clue.

On the hatch to compartment 4 was a nanoglue lock. Have you estimable robots heard of this? It's an old style device that merges the atoms of a door and its frame so they form a single solid. The best lock in existence, but outlawed centuries ago. A minor bit of reprogramming on their safety protocols and they serve as a fearful weapon, capable of fusing any number of objects, a ship in flight, for example, or a living being, into a single mass. One of Garron's antique devices then, from a collection I'd never been able to find.

Charmingly, he'd disconnected the old neural plug and installed a keypad. This was, as the saying goes, a piece of space-cake. I'd booted up my encryption app and started analysis when I heard a hatch slide open. Quickly I muted the interface and pretended to nonchalantly study the door.

"Look, Garron," I said, turning, "what do you suppose the Graff's got in here?"

He was now wearing his 'guileless innocent' face. Inwardly, I sighed.

"I don't know, and don't tamper with that lock! Knowing the Graff it's booby-trapped. Just leave it alone."

"But Garron," I said, "this is the only hatch that's locked like this! Imagine what's inside!"

"I imagine it's something very dangerous. We'll deal with it when we aren't shooting through space," he said, "and that's my final word on the matter. Now step away from there, boy. I've just discovered something that requires your immediate attention."

"What's that, sir?"

"The Graff's galley. Come along, I'm starving."

We established a routine. I inventoried the Graff's treasures, compartment after wondrous compartment. It was hard work but I didn't mind. There was so much history there, so much beauty. So much to think about. Most of it I could catalog, but even a hypersearch failed to ident a few of the pieces.

There was a glowing cube whose material defied analysis; when I scanned it it told me to bugger off, so I did. Some kind of paperweight for masochists, I suppose.

There was a black slab of memory plastic with an ornately carved frame; a ship's registry. I couldn't break its firewall to see what information it contained, but I did discover that it seemed to be transmitting. I wrapped it in dampening foil, just to be safe. Oh, I see that got your interest."

The robots were downright excited. Bob What A Deal clapped his hands and said, "Yes! We compute a 97.6% certainty that this is the item we seek. It is vital that this object be found!"

"Yes, I gathered. Keep listening and maybe we'll discover that together. May I continue?"

"Certainly."

"The strangest thing I found was an expensive but common chest full of woman's clothes - shoes, frocks, swimsuits, undergarments, sporting gear. All very expensive, all the same small size and all seemingly never worn. An individual woman's traveling trunk, but horribly packed, as if it had been thrown together during an emergency. I searched for clues but there were no tags or crests on any of the items.

"Don't waste time with that," said Garron through the speye he'd been using to monitor me, "is that a jar of gold Kopeks I see?"

Ah, yes. I said we'd established a 'routine'. That would be myself on the Graff's ship, methodically cataloging the treasure, while Garron spied on me (for my 'own good') from the comfort of our shuttle. He grumbled about his injuries and assured me his constant hypercable surfing was not only essential business research but therapeutic.

We'd gratefully discarded the scratchy natural fibers of our Ribosian disguises. I was wearing a comfortable crewman's overall and Garron was back in his usual costume of an 'A low ha!' shirt, 'Polly Esther' slacks and black socks and sandals.

So, I stayed in the Graff's ship, the _Indomitable Prince_, while Garron wiled away his time on the _Connie_. Only the universal port kept us connected.

I only saw him 5 times a day, at meals. I tried to broach the subject of the locked compartment but he waved it away; after we were docked and had an escape plan, then he'd allow me to remotely hack the lock, but only then. He wouldn't even let me drill and send in a fibreprobe. "The Graff might have thought of that. After all," he said, "it's always 'safety first' for Garron & Unstoffe." He was half right. It was always 'safety first' for Garron. I'm the one who climbs into the vault to see if the monsters are asleep.

You know, I never asked if I was his first apprentice.

There was no point in arguing. I was forced to concede. I knew the lock was his and he knew I knew, but I simply couldn't outright accuse him and he knew that, too. I hope you follow.

The thing is, principle aside, it didn't matter to me what was in the locked compartment. The treasures I'd already pocketed without him noticing were sufficient to set me up in comfort for several lifetimes. It nagged me that he was cooking a double cross, but that's what I'd come to expect from him. I decided to assume a philosophical attitude.

It was in that enlightened spirit, a few nights later, that I sneaked a peek at his wristtop while he was sleeping off a bottle of invaluable, vintage 3048 Draconian Brandy from compartment two. I was pleased to see his old password ('newmanredford', whatever that meant) hadn't been changed and was soon studying his search history. Among the inevitable mature sentient sites and dealer inquires I found a puzzling exception. On the date he'd locked the compartment he'd visited the home page of the Verne-Burroughs royal family. They're one of the staggeringly wealthy new monarchies that spun out of the collapse of the old empire, ruling a handful of systems bordering the Greater Cyrrhenic Empire. I remembered they were noted for the number of Schlangi mercenaries hailing from their realm. But there was something else... some news I'd heard in passing...

I was about to follow the link when Garron stirred and snorted alarmingly. I decided to not press my luck. Garron's a light sleeper. Thirty year old brandy wouldn't dull his senses for long.

I decided, as I wasn't sleepy, to run diagnostics on the ship. I can't remember if I mentioned it, but we were using the _Connie_ for propulsion; Garron decided we'd not use the Graff's in order to sell the unused fuel. Our ship had a bog-standard Ion drive from Earth, but it was strong enough to tow the Graff's ship. Also, we weren't on a course for anywhere in particular, so I'd set cruise control. What this means is that except for the initial burn and minor hazard corrections we shouldn't have been using fuel. But we had. Sometime since my last check we had changed course and accelerated. I asked the ship who authorized the course change, fully expecting the answer to be 'Master Captain Garron'.

It wasn't.

Less than a minute later I was shaking him awake. Thank goodness he'd fallen asleep in his clothes.

"Wake up, Garron! Wake up!"

"Wha...?"

"Please, sir! Wake up now!"

"Good Lord, Unstoffe! Stop shaking me!"

"You have to wake up now!"

"What's the matter?"

"There's someone else on the ship, sir!"

"What? How on Earth? I said not to tamper -"

"Someone's altered our course! We have to -"

We both stopped talking and stared at one another.

Simultaneously, we said, "Wait! What are you talking about?"

And that's when you lot showed up.

Actually, wait. Something else happened first. You know how sound carries in ships, right? How a whisper in engineering can travel the conduits all the way to the bridge and, say, land you in the brig for five days, eight hours and thirty-seven minutes? Well, Garron began explaining that he'd meant absolutely nothing by his 'tampering' comment, which was from a brandy dream he'd been having and certainly had nothing to do with the locked compartment and he was wounded by the merest suggestion, and I was trying to tell him that the ship was being remotely flown from somewhere on the Graff's cruiser when we both stopped dead.

"Shh!" I said, "Listen!"

"That's on the Graff's ship!" said Garron, bounding off his bunk.

What had we heard? Well, it's hard to put into words. Imagine an audio portmanteau of a rusty engine cranking while someone is playing a Viccanese theriman and someone else is blowing down the neck of a porcelain jug. No? Never mind. All you need to know is we'd heard the sound on Ribos. It was the engine of a ship or travel capsule, one we agreed was the most advanced we'd seen.

"Is it them?" I asked, as we stumbled for the docking port.

"Of course it's them, Unstoffe! I told you, didn't I? I know a swindler when I see one!"

I'm sorry, I have to back up even further. There was a pair of security agents, you see, snooping around to make sure our deal with the Graff was on the level. One was a big fella called the 'Doctor'; he had an assistant, a cool, slim fancy named 'Romana'. An odd pair. Oh, and they had a little robot dog. You'd have liked him.

"Yes, Garron," I said, punching the airlock entry code. We passed through, so intent on investigating that we failed to observe basic safety 101 – no matter what, always seal the connection between two docked ships. "I recall you also said we'd seen the last of him."

"He stole my lump of jethrik and now he's back for the Graff's loot!"

You see, one of our recurring meal conversations was this Doctor's real identity. I didn't see much of him, but Garron did and he claimed the Doctor's story didn't jell. He risked his life helping the Ribosians survive the Graff and his soldiers but only, it seemed to Garron, because they stood between him and the chunk of jethrik. Then there was his robot, his travel capsule and his way with gadgets. Alliance Security is well equipped, but this was well out of their league. We'd even weighed the possibility he was the dreaded Mongoose.

"He seemed a friendly sort," I said as we crept up the corridor, Garron bravely guarding the rear.

"Crooks are always friendly, Unstoffe! That's how you know they're crooks!"

As far as Garron was concerned there were two fundamental flaws in the Doctor's story. One, if he was an undercover agent why did he travel to a restricted, Class 3 planet in a blue, fauxwood capsule with 'Police' plainly written in Earth Olde English above the door? Two, and here was the kicker, this Doctor character was far to intelligent to be security. "No way he's a rhino," said Garron, "his knuckles barely reached the floor."

From the primary airlock of the _Indomitable Prince_ a corridor runs straight for several meters, doglegs left runs another few meters and then up a stair to another level. The hatches of storage compartments one through three lined the left wall, with the rest around the corner.

The Doctor's blue box was straight down the corridor from the airlock. No sign of the Doctor himself. I heard an odd trilling from around the corner. "The Doctor's gadget!" said Garron.

"Garron!" I whispered, "He's messing about with compartment four!"

Garron made a strangling sound and started pushing me when I felt a gentle vibration through the soles of my feet. It reminded me of the fields back home on Darwin, the way the ground trembled when harvester arrays would pass. "Did you feel that? What do you suppose that is?" I said. Garron was staring at the ceiling, as if he could see something through the hull.

"I think that wretched Doctor is not alone this time," he said.

The trilling stopped and all the compartment hatches whooshed open. Our carefully stored treasures shook loose from the vibration. A few spilled to the floor. Someone groaned.

An unfamiliar voice said, "Hullo! What's all this then? Oh! And who are you, I wonder?"

The ship shuddered and my ears popped as a strong tow beam enveloped us.

"Blast, blast and double blast!' said Garron. "Unstoffe! Stop groaning and listen! Are you wearing your secret belt with all the loot you've been squirreling away? Oh, don't bother denying it , boy! Quick, back to the _Connie_! We've got to get out of here!"

That's when, with a horrible ripping sound and a terrible chorus of alarms, the two ships violently detached and the cruiser's power died. For the merest flicker of a moment we floated in sudden darkness and zero-G. Then, with a thin, terrible howl, the escaping air slapped us toward the gaping hatchway. We tumbled, leaves in a hurricane. Somehow Garron gripped the edge of compartment two and I frantically grabbed his legs as the decanted atmosphere pushed me toward open space. As we hung suspended, the open maw of eternity beneath our horizontal feet, our precious retirement treasure began to fly, tumble and roll into outer space. I saw the little rude cube, now glowing brightly, struggle against the current until a flying tapestry enveloped it. Both went out the door with shocking speed. Past their exit I saw our faithful _Connie_ rapidly tumble away until with a bright green ion explosion it hit something – something huge and dark that eclipsed the stars.

In the failing air I heard myself say, "This is it! We're going to die!"

"Well, if you'd let go we might not!"

"Oh, Garron! How could you? I ought to-"

"No, you idiot! Let go and then use the emergency hand crank on the airlock!"

"Are you insane? What if I miss the door? What if -"

I didn't have to finish protesting Garron's lunatic plan, for at that moment I heard a dim, distant cry of, "Expelliarmus!" and suddenly emergency power was restored. The airlock snapped shut, gravity returned and we dropped to the deck. We just lay there for a minute, our gasps adding a backbeat to the hiss of returning atmosphere. Then there was a subtle tremor, a distant hiss of sliding doors, and we heard heavy footfalls somewhere above.

We'd been boarded!

"Where's the Graff's escape pod?" I asked.

"I thought you knew!"

"I've been cataloging! You're the leader! You're supposed to know these things!"

"You know I haven't been feeling well."

"You aren't the one who was shot!"

"Trust you to think of yourself!"

We glared at each other as the lights powered up. Slowly, peripheral awareness returned and we realized a strange man carrying a person in a cryoglove was standing in front of the blue box. He was thin, with unusual spiked hair and a brown striped suit.

He stared at us with an incredulous expression.

"You!" he said, "I know you! Wait, don't tell me! Gary and Unstuffed? Harry and Full Stop?" He gave a little hop. "I know! Garron and Unstoffe! The Bilkos from Ribos! Well, fancy meeting you here!"

"You have us at a disadvantage, sir," said Garron, struggling to his feet, "but that's beside the point. You've committed an unlawful search and seizure, per Alliance regulation 221-beta, clause 578, pertaining to the unwarranted damage of, and removal of personal property from, a privately owned vessel. I demand you and your associates leave this ship and -"

"Sorry! This is a person, not property, and whoever is boarding this ship – it's the Graff Vynda – K's, isn't it? What a terrible man! Anyway, you'd better look sharp, 'cause whoever is boarding this ship, they aren't with me."

At that he kicked the door of the box open and carried his burden inside. As the door closed he cheerily called, "Good-bye!"

The heavy footsteps – scarily suggesting beings running in formation – approached as Garron and I gaped at the box. For once, we were speechless. The nerve! The lack of consideration! The –

"Garron! Was that a girl he was carrying?"

"Let's ask him."

We dashed to the box. Garron made a 'let's calm down' gesture, straightened his collar and drew a breath. Then he rapidly but politely knocked.

"Excuse my intrusion," he said, "but might we have a word?"

He listened intently. From the stair at the end of the corridor I heard the boarders draw near.

"I don't think he can hear us," I said. "Knock louder."

Garron pounded on the door. "Hello! Perhaps we could meet a mutually agreeable settlement?"

The hatch atop the stairs slid open. I saw dark silhouettes and glowing green eyes.

Garron saw it too. "Hello, young man? Is the Doctor inside? He's a dear friend and would doubtless spare no effort to aid us!"

A muffled voice replied through the door. "Well, that's rather overstating the case, isn't it? I mean, I don't take the word 'friend' lightly and... Say!"

The door cracked open. "Have either of you seen anything unusual? A small glowing cube, perhaps?"

As Garron vainly tried to wedge his sandal-clad foot in the door I replied, "Yes! I know exactly where it is!"

The dark figures reached the level deck and approached. Three robots in security armor, bland but friendly human faces. The one in the lead leveled a large weapon, a gun of some sort, and in a pleasant voice said, "Pardon the interruption but please identify! You are the proprietors of this vessel?"

The man in the box said, "Well, I see you're busy. Never mind! I'll find it on my own! Ta!" and pushed the door closed. It clicked with a distinct air of finality.

"I repeat for your convenience: You are the proprietors of this vessel?"

"What?" Garron, still staring at the shut door, said, "Yes, of course we... wait!"

"Identification confirmed. You are the criminal the Graff Vynda-K and unidentified associate. You have been tried and convicted _in abstentia_ of crimes against -"

"No, no! I'm not the Graff! You're making a mistake!"

The blue box made a faint sound, like an old-style combustion engine starting on a cold morning, and the little lamp on top began blinking. The robots simultaneously cocked their heads. I heard a distant mechanical voice say, "Warning! Return to ship! Unscheduled warp commencing!"

From within the blue box I heard a cry of, "What?" and suddenly the craft's engines began whining shrilly. The blue box began to fade in and out of sight, but with no pattern, as if it were struggling.

The _Indomitable Prince_ began to shudder, then lurched violently. Garron, myself and the robots were tossed into the air, hit the ceiling and came down hard. In the brief stillness that followed a foil-wrapped package – that ship's registry you're so keen on – dropped out of compartment three and hit the deck with a _tink!_. As one, the robot's heads snapped to it. So did Garron's.

I guess it was just instinct for the old man. If it was valuable to the robots it was valuable to him, you know? So all four of them dived and scrambled to be the first to gain possession. As the box gurned behind us and the ship began to shudder again, Garron and the lead robot played tug of war with the slab. The foil ripped and Garron was left holding it while the robot triumphantly held the slab aloft. And then the sarcophagus case of the 3rd Duke of Misty Meadows toppled out of the compartment and squashed the three robots flat. Garron whispered, "Thank you!" to the gods of realtors and hugged the slab. I grabbed his shirt and pulled him to his feet and yelled, "Escape ship!" He nodded and we stumbled away in opposite directions.

"This way, you old fool!" I said, reasoning that the escape ship dock would be mid-decks.

That's when the blue box made an incredible tolling sound and everything went transparent and sparkly. It was like a primitive computer graphic. Sparks crawled along the lines of everything. I could see the frame of the ship, the decks above and below and, incidentally, an empty escape ship port and an unpillaged, secret treasure compartment. But superimposed upon this was something else, something like a labyrinth of corridors and chambers, somehow escaping the confines of the blue box and extending into the far distance. It hurt the brain to look at it. I saw the stranger standing at a console and a slumped figure on a seat near him. He stared at us, open mouthed, and began to furiously throw switches.

Beyond the ship I could see a vast black orb with a veil of the same blue sparks, an umbilical reaching out and ensnaring us. The stranger yelled something over the reverberating tolling and grabbed a lever. He looked over at us, cocked his head and grinned, and pulled it.

I heard Garron cry out. The planet had vanished but the blue sparkly veil remained. As we watched, it stretched tighter and thinner until, from our perspective, it was like looking down the mouth of a cone, tunnel or vortex. The machine rumbled and I heard the man cry out again, "No, no, no!"

And, just like someone had released the end of a stretched rubber band, we shot forward into the sparkly vortex."

"But what of the registry? Do you know where it is?"

"That was the last I saw of it. Sorry, Bob, but I was too distracted, what with having my very existence violated, to pay much attention to anything else. I guess it was on the Graff's ship?"

"The wreckage of the Graff's ship has been searched with no success. We know the registry is here and regretfully we accuse you of concealing it."

"And I'm telling you that the only person who might know is Garron. And Garron isn't here. Now, if I can continue maybe we can figure it out together?"

"Very well. Despite the urgency of our situation, I must confess we find your story fascinating. You were shot into a space warp vortex, then? That must have been alarming."

"You've no idea.

I was still screaming when I awoke in the jungle. I screamed again when I realized I was slipping through the very top of a very tall tree. I seized a handful of thin branches, clambered to the bole and found a thick branch to sit on. Assuming I could climb down, I was safe.

I looked out through the leaves. A hot yellow sun gleamed in a cloudless blue sky. A sea of green foliage stretched to the base of a high plateau that spanned the horizon. Behind me, the jungle thinned and I could see rolling grasslands. In the farthest distance I saw another treeline and an expanse of sparkling water.

Here and there I saw signs of civilization. A quaintly curved road crossed the prairie, occasional clumps of trees and buildings along the way. Multiple small columns of smoke lazily curled upward into the still air.

Birds sang, and the trees were crowned with butterflies.

I breathed deeply. The air was flush with green freshness. It made me feel at peace.

That's when I realized a sound had slowly been overtaking me. A thin sustained squeal or scream coming from the sky above. I looked up just as something white plunged into the branches overhead. It snapped into the foliage a bit further from the trunk than I and continued to fall. Without thinking I lunged toward it, guessing where its trajectory would intersect mine. Using a springy branch I leaped and took hold of the plummeting object.

I realized two things. One, the object was a woman in a tight cryoglove. The inhabitant of compartment four that Garron had tried to hide from me. The same one the stranger had taken into the box. The Graff's hostage.

No, no. Not a woman. A woman is mature, measured in tone and temperament. A woman, no matter how lovely, has some invisible gravity to her that a man can sense. This was a _girl_. Young, fresh and astoundingly beautiful. A princess, you know? My arms encircled her right beneath hers and I gazed into her face as she gawked into mine. I instantly fell totally and terrifyingly in love. Endless hours later her screams and struggles alerted me to the second thing I mentioned before. We were well away from the branches of the tree. We were in midair and plunging toward something big, brown and flat. As the ground rushed up at us I cried, "I love you!" She screamed and I cried, "I'm sorry!" She screamed again but I didn't have time to respond.

Well, obviously I didn't die. If there had been solid ground beneath us I expect we'd have been goners, but the flat brown thing luckily turned out to be the surface of a deep mud hole. We impacted with a _slap!_ and the morass closed above our heads. I imagine it was quiet for a moment, maybe a bird made a tentative attempt to resume its song, when we erupted, spitting, from the mud. The princess waded through the waist deep mud, glared up at me with brilliant emerald eyes from behind her brown mask, and slugged me with surprising strength. My knees buckled and I just lay there.

"What," She spit mud, "was the," spit, "meaning of that?"

"Princess, I -"

She held an imperious finger aloft and expelled brown mud for a moment. I floated, enchanted, as she cleared one fine nostril, then the other. She squeezed the muck from her long dark hair, peeled the glove from her skin and shook off the excess goo, and sighed. Then she looked down at me.

"You idiot! Were you trying to get me killed? And who gave you permission to touch me? And," she paused, "did you just call me 'princess'?"

"I do. I mean, I did."

"What would a princess be doing... Oh, fine. You know." She looked around her, seeming to take in her surroundings for the first time. "Where are we?"

"I have no idea. Some planet. You _were_ in cryosleep on a ship belonging to the Graff Vynda-K. Now we're both here. I think there was a warp accident. By the way, you appear to be sinking. You should try not to stand."

She gave a startled shriek and did exactly the wrong thing, which was struggle. In a moment she was stuck fast, only her head visible. I paddled across the surface to her.

"Permission to touch the sacred personage?" I asked.

I'd heard the word 'glower' before and knew what it described, but I reckon I'd never truly seen one.

"Just this once, imbecile."

It crossed my mind, briefly, that Garron would have left her there upon being called, 'imbecile'. Fortunately, I am not Garron. I am, however, me, and the princess's singularly common manner stung.

"Princess, 'imbecile'?" I said as mildly as I was able, "You wound me. I'll tell you what – perhaps there is a gallant prince of proper breeding somewhere in this jungle. I'll ask around, shall I? Don't wander off!"

She growled and struggled, freeing one arm. Luckily I was out of range. She sank a little bit more. I smiled to myself – she was in no danger. Soon she'd realize a hard layer was just under her feet. I had better hurry.

I swim-crawled my way to the reeds edging the mire. I pushed my way through, enjoying the solid ground beneath my squelching space shoes. The princess cursed my ancestors; really, her vocabulary was appalling. Inventive, to be sure, but rather raw for a person of breeding. I was chucking over her intimation of my grandfather's proclivity toward llamas when I reached a large fallen tree. I hoisted myself up and got a good view of our surroundings.

A narrow, clear stream rushed toward the prairie; we'd landed in an adjacent pool. The jungle thinned considerably to what I guessed was the north, in the direction of the stream. One of those clusters of trees and buildings lay outside the forest, sharply delineated in the bright sunlight. Down below, in the shadows of the jungle, I was pleased to see the princess treading mud but now silent. She saw me on my high perch and thrashed again. She shouted.

She was going to 'behind me'? That didn't make sense, did it?

Well, gentlemen... BAM! I was staggered by a hard knock to my head. "Ow! That hurt!" I said, spinning to see who'd done the deed. I must have been hit harder than I thought – turning around made me terribly dizzy. I swayed there, looking into the reptilian face of a savage warrior! It swung the club again, giving me a good clock on the ear.

"Stop it!" I said. I was getting very lightheaded, but my sense of self-preservation kicked in and I covered my head. So he calmly reached out and gently pushed my chest. That was all it took to send me off the log and down into the foliage below.

Garron says I have a hard head and he's hinted more than once that my capacity to withstand injury was the reason I caught his eye. That's all fine and good for him. He's not the one being hurt. I've been stabbed with knife, spear and sword, shot by laser, slug and plasma (Oh, plasma!)... I won't even mention the torture. Sure our Handy Housecall unit on the _Connie_ always fixed me up in a few days and I've no lasting scars, but in principle I'm strictly opposed to pain and general discomfort. So, while being hit twice with a metal club and falling about twenty feet into a bramble was par for the course, I didn't really enjoy it. I wish I'd lost consciousness, but I rarely seem to.

I was instantly surrounded by more reptilians and dragged toward the mud hole. I thought there was a horde of reptiles but realized I was seeing triple. So there weren't really eighteen reptiles encircling three princesses, but I went with it for novelty's sake. The princesses, sunk to their perfectly tapered chins, were uncharacteristically silent. The reptiles were speaking in an unknown tongue, and I was wondering if my Babblechip was on the blink again, or if the knock to my head had damaged it, when I started to make out certain words and phrases. My vision returned to normalcy at the same time.

The reptile who'd slugged me entered the group. He was bigger than the others, so I assumed he was their leader.

"? friends ? we ? dinner ? evening!" he said in rich, stentorian tones.

They cheered.

"? prepare the meat!" He pointed at the princess and said, "Give ? females!"

Say, I'd better tell you what they looked like, shouldn't I? They were standard humanoids: two, one, one, two and two, and their faces were quite human. But their heads were conical, their ears were pointed and they had wispy chin beards. Knobby scales grew from the sides of their head and covered their bodies except for the rude parts which, to my fleeting amusement, suffered rather markedly from Kendaw syndrome.

Bright war-paint covered their brownish bodies and they wore a variety of crude adornments. Armbands, helmets and the like.

Despite their fearful appearance, they looked familiar and somewhat comforting. I was pondering their identity when the princess solved it for me.

"Hear me, Draconians!" she said, in perfect textbook Draconian which my translator easily converted, "I am the Princess Shawneequa Jane Lime of the royal house of Verne-Burroughs! I invoke the Seven Civil Fundaments of Draconia and entreat thee for respectful assistance and fellowship!" She looked in my direction and frowned muddily. "And for my servant, too, I suppose."

Well, that got them jabbering and I took the opportunity to relax. Draconians kept to themselves except for the few rogue elements found in every species, but they were generally reckoned to be fair, serious and lawful, with an altogether less roughshod culture and civilization than humanity. Which is why Garron and I kept out of their empire.

I'd 'relaxed' about ten 'nits toward the treeline when one of the savages noticed me. "? princess's servant ?!" he cried, and I was seized and dragged to the edge of the mud. The Draconian chief pointed at the princess and jabbered at me. I didn't need a translation, and "Slave ? talking female ? clean ? eat for dinner" wasn't at all helpful except in making me regret my agnosticism.

"I'm coming out to get you, princess," I said, "please don't hurt me."

"I'm fine where I am," she said, "as they don't seem to speak Draconian."

"Oh, I think they got the gist, but their Draconian is rusty. Turn on your translator."

"I have no translator."

"You're not chipped?" I asked, surprised.

"Royalty is not chipped, thank you. One may be unduly influenced."

"All you need's a brain, for that," I said, gingerly stepping into the cool mud and waiting for a withering retort.

Instead, to my surprise, she asked, "Are you alright? He hit you very hard."

My joy at her concern was somewhat mitigated by her addition of, "Of course, I expect your skull is very thick."

I stopped, waist deep. "You know, my chip is functioning perfectly." I called up Draconian. "You are aware that they intend to eat us?"

I chuckled; that shut her up.

"I hear the wild Draconians prefer to ingest their prey while it's still alive, in fact."

"That is patently untrue! You besmirch our reputation!"

No, that wasn't the princess. That was the chief. I looked, and a half dozen spears were pointed at me.

My chip had sorted out the dialect and had been instructing my vocal cords to simulate their speech. The good news was, we could beg for help now. The bad news was, I'd just insulted them. I cowered and entwined my writhing fingers like Garron taught me.

"Please forgive me, oh great chief and mighty warriors. My mastery of your sophisticated tongue is crude and ineffective and I regret any untoward misunderstandings. May I, your humble servant, inquire as to the exact nature of your intended course of action concerning the princess and myself?"

"You may inquire."

There's one in every jungle. The tribe chucked. I sighed.

"Great one, what are your intentions concerning the princess and myself?"

"We shall treat you as we treat all the fallen sky gods, of course. First, however, we will mark the novelty of this particular situation and accord you due respect. You will be cleaned, groomed and treated to a fine meal in celebration of your advent among us."

"Oh!" I translated for the princess Shawneequa, who said, "That doesn't sound so bad!"

At which the chief added, "And then we're going to eat you. You'll be cooked first, of course. 'Raw', really!"

Someone gibbered at this. I realized it was me and willed myself to stop.

I translated for the princess, who said, "Fiddlesticks!"

"Don't worry," I said, ignoring her appalling profanity and cuing the chip to speak English, "I'll get out of this. I mean, I'll get us out of this."

"Hurry up, human," said the chief. "It takes hours to marinate the meat properly."

"So, what's your plan?" said the princess.

"I'm working on it, I'm working on it'" I said, while thinking to myself, "Let me work through this abject terror first, alright?" Then I recalled something the chief said.

"Wait! What did you mean by 'sky gods'?"

"What do you mean by, 'what do I mean by "sky gods"? You have fallen from the sky like so many before you. Therefore, you are a sky god. It's quite simple, really. Though I must admit your current state is unique, in our experience."

"That's right! You said 'novelty'. What's so different about us?"

"Why, you're alive, of course. And," he frowned slightly, with distaste or maybe doubt, "_talking_. In times before, all sky gods were either old and withered or seem to have previously suffered grave injury. Also, thanks to Skink, there-" one of the warriors nodded, "you two are the only ones we have seen actually fall at the same time. It's quite odd, now that I come to consider it."

I thought furiously. This was an unexpected boon of some sort. I had to turn this situation to my advantage, but how? The Draconians seemed rather blasé about our advent. Was this simply due to their stoic nature? And what was the explanation for all the dead bodies they'd feasted on? Was this some sort of cemetery world? I looked closer at their ornaments. Gentlemen, among the obvious things foraged from the jungle - feathers, hides and such – they were wearing obvious technological relics. I saw a fusion battery strapped to a club head, a diode chain necklace, a plexi-port worn as a chest shield and other things. Under its crown of feathers the chief's headband, I realized, was a comm unit.

These weren't primitive Draconians at all! They were the degenerate descendants of some crash survivors or lost expedition! I looked at the chief again. He was conferring in whispers with a priest of some sort, a wiry fellow with half his face painted red and a single horn strapped on that side, who glanced sidelong at me and ran a finger across his throat. It wasn't hard to ascertain his opinion but the chief appeared unconvinced.

That's when it happened. I don't know about you, but when I get a brainstorm a warm glow fills my body. Well, I was blazing when I climbed out of the mud.

"Play along, princess," I said, "I have an idea."

I drew a deep breath as the furious chief approached and cried, "Stop! This charade has gone on long enough! Hear me, sons of Draconia! Harken back to the tales of your ancestors!"

They murmured. This was good. I jumped on a nearby boulder. Always go for altitude when you're talking down to people, Garron says.

"Why are myself and the royal princess alive when all the other sky gods were but corpses? Do any of you know?"

They did not. The chief shushed them. He sensed he was losing control. I had to cow him, now.

"Why are you here? This is not your homeland! Chief! What hereditary secrets does your line hide from your tribe?"

His expression told me everything I needed to know.

"We are those ones foretold in your legends!" Bit of a gamble, that. "The prophesied time has come!"

The warriors began to mutter, the priest wailed and the chief roared. He leaped upon a slightly larger boulder, damn his eyes, and furiously signaled for silence. The mutters subsided.

"My people!," he cried, "The sky god speaks the truth!"

One point for Unstoffe.

"From the beginning, your chiefs have hidden a terrible secret!"

Two points.

"We are not natives of this land! We came from far away, from beyond the sky!"

Game, set, match.

"For our ancestors were outcasts! We followed forbidden pursuits! Our people came to us with fire and steel! They meant to destroy us and we fled to this hidden refuge!"

Wait. _What?_

"And now the cursed day has come! We have been found and this soft creature is a harbinger of our destruction! He must be destroyed, now, lest he expose us!"

Oh, fiddlesticks.

Have you ever heard the tale of Crewman Colepit? I always meant to tell Garron. I wish he could hear it. Absolutely true. This was a fellow, a few centuries back, who served as a welder on one of the old mining dreadnoughts during the early succession wars. He was caught outside during a surprise attack. The hull exploded under his feet but he was miraculously saved by a bit of intact shielding. The attacking fighter's pilot had ejected prematurely and Colepit tumbled right into the empty cockpit. To his amazement it powered right up and gave him control. You have to understand, these things were keyed to the pilot's biocode so that enemies couldn't do what Colepit proceeded to do – he flew straight to the enemy carrier and dropped a torpedo into its engine core. When he returned to the dreadnought they discovered that the ejected pilot was none other than his long-lost twin sister, who in turn had been captured after unexpectedly being able to enter the similarly defended dreadnought. It was computed that the odds of this chain of events were several trillion to one, and the reunited siblings went on to win the Atomic Lottery and live happily ever after in a stylish four-up on Beggar's Bounty.

The tale of Crewman Colepit was the first thing I thought of when, immediately after the princess wailed, "You fool! What did you say to them? Who is going to save me now?" my communicator crackled to life and I heard Garron say, "Unstoffe, you fool! What are you playing at with those Dragons?"

"Garron? Oh, Garron! Where are you?"

"Don't look up! The Doctor says he has a plan."

"The Doctor's with you! That's wonderful! What's his plan?"

The communicator was silent for a moment. Then -

"Well, I didn't expect that."

"Garron? What's the Doctor's plan?"

"Plummeting to his certain death, apparently."

I looked up. Hundreds of meters in the air I saw a rotund burden dangling from a parachute. In the air between, growing larger by the second, the man in the brown suit dropped to earth, his faint scream growing louder. I thought fast.

"Hear me, Draconians! I bring you a sacrifice to prove my good intentions!" I bellowed.

And that's when the chief glanced up, tilted his head and was clobbered by the falling body. I heard the distinct _Crack!_ of snapping bones and hoped they were the chief's. The startled tribe scattered into the jungle. Flocks of birds erupted from the jungle to mark their flight.

I stood there for a moment, my mind a puzzled haze.

"Hey! Snap out of it!"

"Oh, sorry, princess!"

I rushed to the mud hole and, using a dropped spear made of a plasteel spar, pulled the princess to dry land. Garron gently trotted to a landing in the clearing.

"Hello, boy," he called, "nick of time, eh? Shame about this fellow, I suppose."

I helped the princess stand and joined Garron to gaze on the bodies. The chief, amazingly, was slowly clenching his hands. He'd survived. The heroic agent stared at the sky, unblinking. I reached to close his eyes when they shifted in my direction and he grinned. We all jumped back.

He sat up, stretched and then stood. He did a little dance, as if drying his limbs, and we heard his joints pop. He ran a hand through his hair and grinned. "Well, I won't want to try that trick again any time soon! Oh, look at the Draconian. You poor man, we'll soon have you right as rain. Right! You two," he meant Garron and myself, "we need a stretcher! Garron, don't bother stuffing your parachute back in your tesseract, we'll use that, Unstoffe's spear and that stick over there."

I knew it! I'd suspected Garron had a tesseract but he'd never admit it. If you don't know, a tesseract is a highly illegal pocket of void space one can have tied to one's person and made accessible only at your personal command. With the possibilities for mayhem inherent in such a device, not to mention the possibility of a gargantuan implosion should the portal fail, it's understandable that the penalty for owning one is, thanks to modern medicine, three consecutive death sentences.

Still, it was preferable to the other way he could make useful items appear, I suppose.

We assembled the stretcher with only mild complaint; I think Garron and I were a bit out of our element and uncharacteristically willing to follow the stranger's lead. He appeared occupied with the chief, the princess watching, so I took the opportunity to confer with Garron.

"Garron, who is that guy? You called him 'Doctor', like that bloke on Ribos."

Garron squinted sideways and studied the man.

"I don't know how, but it is him. We had a few minutes to talk, floating around up there. He said he'd regenerated, whatever that means"

"Must be a new custom body process," I said. It was perfectly feasible. "So, was he following us?"

"Complete denial. Just a coincidence, he said. He was after that glowing cube."

"Oh."

We laid out the parachute and folded it over. Garron, the need for secrecy passed, snapped his fingers and a perfectly round shimmer appeared an inch from his chest. He performed a complicated hand gesture and quickly reached inside. It was hard to look at. When his hand emerged he held a pocket knife. Another finger snap and the portal – that's what it was – shrunk to a point and vanished with the faintest of sparks. He began to saw the cords, ignoring my glare.

"You could have told me. I've suspected for years, but you could have told me."

He frowned. "That would make you an accomplice. Do you know the penalty for having a tesseract?"

"Of course. I know the penalty for almost every crime there is."

"You always were a pessimist. Go grab that pole, will you?"

I went to the pole, which stuck straight out of the soft ground, and Garron said, "I'm glad to see you're okay, Unstoffe."

I said, "Me too, Garron," and pulled the pole from the earth. Its savagely beautiful tip gleamed through the dirt.

It sang.

"Garron! This is the Singing Spear of Sven Venison! From the ship!"

"What?" said Garron. "That means more of my treasures may be around! Keep your eyes peeled, boy." He began peering around. A thought struck him and he cringed and looked up.

"I wouldn't worry," said the Doctor, his screwdriver trilling, "it's all over now save the singing. Speaking of which -"

He adjusted the 'driver and examined the merrily humming spear. He scowled and made another adjustment. No result.

"Excuse me," said Shawneequa, "but if that's what I think it is, it won't stop singing until it makes a kill."

"That's hardly scientific!" the Doctor snapped.

"Well," said Garron, "Let's just kill two birds with one stone, shall we?" and looked meaningfully at the chief.

"Certainly not!" said the Doctor. "That would be murder!"

"Says the man who was prepared to abandon two dear old friends to the mercy of killer robots," said Garron.

"Nonsense. I was just having fun with you. I was on my way to rescue you when we got caught in the warp. Dangerous thing, an unshielded warp drive fusing with an admittedly wonky dimensional stabilizer and-" he glared meaningfully at Garron "-a leaky tesseract. Certainly took the Tardis by surprise." He paused for a moment. "Still, no harm done, eh? We're safe and sound on this planet's surface and if my readings are correct there are some items from the ship just over there.

"Now, let's see where the Tardis landed and we'll get out of here." He pointed the device towards the plains, the jungle, the plateau. "Nothing." He pointed it straight down. "You never know". Frowning, he pointed it straight up to the blue sky and I heard the pitch change. Garron, the princess and I exchanged looks while he stood there, his arm moving in a slow arc horribly suggestive of an orbit.

"Well... That's certainly cast things in a new light," he said. "Damn."

And that's when the mutter of drums began drifting from the jungle.

"The next hour was extremely hectic, full of drama, incident and humor. I'm going to skip it, if you fellows don't mind. If I keep rambling on you'll have to break for a recharge. Speaking of which, is there food? The three of us haven't properly eaten in days."

"Your comfort is our command! A menu will be delivered forthwith!"

"Oh, thank you! That's uncommonly decent of you."

"Not at all. Now, did you say, 'drums'?"

"I sure did. Scary ones, too. An hour later found us running along the stream toward the plateau I'd spotted. Well, I say running, but walking at an accelerated pace is more like it. The princess and the Doctor shared the front of the chief's stretcher while I held the rear. Garron puffed behind us, a bit theatrically, I thought. The chief reclined in comfort, murdering me through slitted eyes.

Thanks to the Doctor's sonic, we were free of mud and feeling refreshed. My skin still tingled. The other items from the ship proved to be the scattered contents of the princess's trunk. She was now outfitted in stylish jungle explorer gear (my valiant offer to stand watch while she changed was refused). I must say, the jodhpurs were flattering from where I stood. Between the agreeable view and the spear's jaunty march I found myself having a strangely enjoyable experience. The only clouds in my mind derived from the Doctor and princess's instant rapport and the chief's reluctant admittance that the drums were those of his tribe's bitter, savage enemies and not, as we'd supposed, those of his people. Who, I may as well tell you, don't appear again.

Why were we running toward the plateau? Well, we ran because we were being chased, though we hadn't caught more than fleeting glimpses of our pursuers. We ran to the highlands because the Doctor had had an idea. He'd made a few more scans with the 'driver and appeared puzzled. He dropped a rock. Hopped in place. Studied the sun. Then he threw himself flat with an ear to the ground and listened. When he stood, he had open admiration on his face.

"We have to get that plateau," he said, "if I'm right about where we are, and I am, that's our only hope."

The chief spoke from the stretcher. "Many who brave the walls of the world do not return. Those who do are mad. Please do not take me there."

The Doctor knelt. "Sorry, chief. You're our bit of insurance. I assure you we will allow you to come to no harm."

"You will keep the fat one away from me?"

"Sure."

"And allow me to regain my honor by defeating the large-eared one in battle?" He meant me, by the way.

"Eh, probably not, but we'll see. May I ask you a question?"

"You may ask," I said, and the chief frowned.

"Hmmph! Ask your question."

"What do you call your world? What's its name?"

The chief's answer was stunning.

The universe is full of ghost stories. Most are just nonsense, spacer's yarns meant to while away the grind of a long haul. Everyone's heard of scratches on the hull, lights that follow, dead crewmen peering in ports, that sort of thing. But some have real substance, a weight to them that's pretty much convinced all but the most skeptical. There's a spectral saucer fleet that appears in the Medusa Cascade. There's a 1,000 year-old Earth automobile with an eccentric but friendly crew that's been seen for, well, 1,000 years. Even Garron claimed his old cottage in Hackney Wick had a phantom, an old resistance fighter from the Dalek invasion. But the most mysterious, most feared space ghost wasn't a ship, a person or a monster – it was a planet. A black, featureless sphere, this world was said to leave a trail of madness wherever it appeared. None who landed on it returned. The most awe-inspiring thing about it, though, was its age. This world, the greatest ghost of all time, was said to have appeared not for decades or centuries. No, the planet Rallax and its eldritch reputation had haunted the space lanes for _millions_ of years.

"Are we really on Rallax, Doctor?" I asked later, "'cause Rallax is supposed to be black and featureless. This is a jungle. Well, down there it was."

We'd reached the foothills of the plateau. The stream now raced cold and clear as it sought the low lands. The vegetation was thinner, the trees turning to evergreens. We cast long shadows as the sun set behind us. Above us, the sky darkened and tiny points of light appeared.

The Doctor slowed to a stop. He scanned our path and appeared satisfied.

"We can rest for a minute," he said, "we can see them coming from here.

"Now, Unstoffe, I really don't want to say what I'm thinking. I doubt you'd believe me. It's better if I just show you, alright?"

"Now you sound like Garron. You'll tell us when we need to know."

Garron was studying the emerging stars with an unreadable expression. "Doctor," he said, "have you ever been to Earth?"

"Earth's my second home. And I know what you're seeing so don't mention it."

"It's deuced odd."

"Yes."

They trailed into silence, watching the sky. The princess and I exchanged shrugs.

As Garron had had the foresight to truss him securely, the chief had given us no trouble. He'd maintained a stony silence through our flight, though I spotted him tapping his fingers in time to the spear's music. But he spoke now and I'm glad he did.

"I hate to interrupt your astronomical studies, gentlemen, but I assume you'd be interested to know that a tribe of human savages is creeping up the hillside?"

We grabbed him and ran. The primitive humans let up a cry and pursued.

"Thanks!" I panted, and he replied, "I have no concern for your lives, however if I am to survive I require at least two of you to bear me."

"Unstoffe, stop talking to the Dragon and run, will you?" said Garron.

He didn't need to tell me twice. About running, I mean. These savage humans had bows. I heard a sound I'd wished to never hear again – the _plink!_ of arrows hitting rocks. Well, actually _plink!_ is good; that means one less arrow in me. It's the meaty _thud!_ I didn't want to hear.

We raced up a narrow, steep path. The chief stoically bore the forceful shaking. The spear was now singing a dramatic choral piece. Garron huffed alarmingly as he passed us, belly jiggling and legs working like pistons, and blended into the murky darkness above. The Doctor and the princess ran like automatons, showing no sign of weariness. I was developing a painful stitch in my side and felt a slight tug on the stretcher as they began to outpace me. We ran, and a howling horde followed.

The path leveled and turned to follow the cliff face. The front-of-stretcher crew put on a burst of speed. "Wait!" I said, but they didn't. The stretcher was pulled from my hands. It bounced and dragged on the gravel but to their credit the others didn't let go. I caught up, wheezing, and bent to grab the poles when an arrow cleanly parted my hair and I heard a distant cry of disappointment. Then they began to fly amongst us in earnest. _Plink! Plink! Plink!_

The Doctor turned, wide-eyed. "Grab the stretcher, Unstoffe! Now!" I did, unable to resist the command, and we fairly sailed along the path. I was waiting with abject dread for the next arrow to plunge into my back, feeling immanent death piling up like an oncoming wave in a storm. But it didn't come. I risked a look back as the sun finally slipped below the horizon and night fell. The path was empty and quiet. I looked down at the chief, who of course had been anxiously peeking around me the entire time. He settled back, relaxed.

"Doctor, I think they're gone," I said.

"Of course," said the chief, "this place is taboo for all inhabitants of Rallax."

"'None return', remember?" I added.

"Do you intend to?" asked the Doctor. "This is just the place we want to be, then!"

We jogged on at a thankfully slower pace and a bright moon crept out from behind the cliff top and lit our path. The Doctor studied the moon and nodded as if a suspicion had been confirmed. The princess stared.

"Doctor," she said, "my ancestors came from Earth. I've studied their history..."

"Yes, yes."

"Then that means..."

"Yes."

"Amazing! Rallax is a -"

I didn't get to hear what Rallax was because just then Garron shouted from above.

"Doctor! This is amazing! You must come see this!"

I was getting heartily sick from being excluded from all the shared amazement, let me tell you. I'm always the last to find out anything. So it's absolutely typical that at that moment I heard a thin whistle and something smacked the lump where the chief clobbered me and for one of the few times in my poor beleaguered existence I fell unconscious.

Wild shadows cast by flickering flame danced across the cliff face while capering figures ululated and shrieked. Drums beat a frenzied tattoo that pounded into my leaden muscles and splitting skull. Then I blacked out again.

Garron was speaking from far, far away. I blinked my eyes and my vision returned. I was lying discarded at the foot of the cliff. The fire was now red embers. In the moonlight I could spy the distant tree tops far below. From the moon's position I deduced a couple hours had passed. The tribesmen were sitting in an attentive array facing four posts set along the edge of a circular area.

Garron was lashed to the post on the far left, the others lined up to his right – the chief, the princess, the Doctor. They'd been in a scrap, that's for sure. As I said, Garron was speaking. He was using his 'teacher' voice, accompanied by the singing spear, and the tribe was entranced. I wished I could see their faces.

"...and, as I've said, 'tis a magic land we hail from! A land without beasts who devour the hunter! A land without brambles to catch on the skin! A land of plenty, of safety, of many buxom maidens like the one you see here!" The princess, who honestly isn't particularly buxom or, I suspect, the other thing, glared at him.

He'd segued into his huckster voice. "Careful, Garron," I thought.

I slowly sat up, trying to not alert the tribe. I saw the four notice me, and the Doctor cried out, "Well, it's about time! Er, It's about time to demonstrate that yes, we are indeed gods! No doubt!"

The princess chimed in, "And now we will awe you with our mighty power!"

"I want nothing to do with this, but if it will free me I will attest to the godhood of these humans," added the chief; rather unconvincingly, I thought.

At this heretical utterance a mild point of theological contention erupted between the tribal agnostics and the true believers.

Garron cried, "Do not squabble amongst yourselves, mortals!" as with a resounding series of thuds the agnostic delegation was silenced. "Oh," said Garron, "That efficiently settles that. Now, er... Doctor?"

"Right. Who out there can tell me: what are those little points of light in the sky?"

After a quick conference, a timid, "Stars?" was offered.

"Right! And which of you fine fellows can tell me what stars are?"

"Sparkling pieces of ice," I thought. I leaned back to enjoy the show and was immediately startled. The cliff face hummed and vibrated!

"Are they suns like ours, only so far away they appear tiny?" said the resident astronomer.

"Oh, that's brilliant! You're brilliant, you are!" The Doctor grinned for a second, pleasantly surprised, then frowned. "No! The stars are simply little floating chunks of ice!"

I looked at the rock wall and what I saw was so incongruous, so impossible, that my mind refused to accept it.

"What is this 'ice' you speak of, possible god?"

"Oh, er, you don't really have that here, do you? It is a jungle after all, isn't it?"

"Is it a type of bird, perhaps?"

I faced a control panel. In large English letters, it read, 'Wild Adventure Environmental Control Substation H'. I brushed off centuries of dust and studied the gently glowing switches and dials.

Behind me the Doctor said, "Yes! Yes, that's it!"

"This 'ice' is a bird, then? But why does it glow? Does it self-lumenesce like the glowbugs of the plains?"

Garron thundered, "Forget the ice! It's not important! What's important is that we have the very power of turning the darkest night to brightest day!"

Which, in fact, was clearly labeled on the third panel down.

A furious voice broke through the erupting clamor. "Stop! This will stop now!"

A rather formidable female form leaped to her feet. "These are not gods! Do gods bruise and bleed? Do gods beg for their lives or traffic with the cone-headed ones? No! Let me hear you say, 'No'!"

Oh, she was good. Their chorused, "No!" echoed across the night.

"And what of these claims they make? Not even the gods can turn night to day! Such a thing is impossible! Unheard of! They merely delay us in this forbidden place with their stories and puppets and magic dances!" - I'd missed an awful lot, apparently - "Slay them! Slay them now before doom comes to us all!"

Spear and knives were readied, the savages advanced on their helpless, struggling victims and the singing spear reached a dramatic crescendo. I drew a deep breath, coughed, and drew another.

"STOP!" I thundered. They froze in place.

"The dead one lives!" came a hushed whisper.

"BEHOLD OUR POWER!" I turned the 'Sky Array' manual control knob to 'Day'.

"Sorry, Binro," I thought, as the night sky instantly and blindingly became bright blue day, "but sometimes they _are_ really just lights in the sky."

The effect on the tribe of feral humans was instantaneous. A third of them fainted in their tracks. Another third, the chief lady included, howled and fled. The remainder groveled.

"Stand, faithful ones!" I intoned, feeling guilty at my enjoyment of being worshiped, "Though fully capable of doing it themselves, demonstrate your loyalty and free the other gods."

This was done, though the Draconian chief rather let the side down by crumpling to the ground. I suppose our demonstration was a bit too much for him, poor chap. The others crowded around.

"Fine work, my boy," beamed Garron, slapping my back.

"Not bad, not bad at all," said the Doctor, shaking my hand.

I almost joined the fallen chief when the princess enveloped me in a sincere hug and kissed my ear. "You will be rewarded," she whispered. After only briefly considering the nature of my reward, I realized we were still the object of veneration. Embarrassing, ankle stroking veneration, in fact.

"Oh, get up, you lot." I commanded. "Take your fallen comrades and go from this place! Never return, or we will plunge your world into eternal night forever!"

It was done in less time than it takes to tell you.

"Well, Unstoffe, that was redundant but it did the job," said the Doctor. He rubbed his hands. "Now! Let's be on our way! Oh, and Unstoffe?"

"Yes?"

"You really should let the princess go. I'm fairly sure she's stopped breathing."

We left the Draconian chief where he lay. There wasn't any reason to carry him further.

Beyond the control panel a flight of stone steps with a tarnished hand rail climbed the rock wall. We ascended, higher and higher. Soon the round ledge was far below, a coin on a sidewalk.

Higher still, and in the distance we saw another plateau beyond the sea. The sky assumed a knobby, multifaceted texture. And at the top of the stairs we all stopped as the Doctor waved his sonic at a small control dais and a section of the sky creaked down to join the stairs. Somewhere beyond, I heard engines and ethereal music.

It was magic. It was wonderful. Everyone seemed enchanted by the awe of it, even flinty old Garron, and we all moved with a certain solemn grace.

The Doctor ascended the stairs and stepped into darkness beyond the glowing blue bulbs. Garron and the princess followed. I paused a moment, touched the sky. The lights weren't hot at all, but cool as ice.

I turned to bid the wild land goodbye and realized the rising, ethereal music I'd been hearing wasn't in my head at all. The Draconian chief, his noble face contorted with rage, surged up the stairs and threw the singing spear. I ducked and it cracked past like a thunderbolt. Pledging good behavior if the gods saved me, I scrambled for the darkness.

As I passed the portal the ramp shuddered, creaked and rose. The stairs weren't stairs any more and I tripped and sprawled. I'd banged my knee but I was safe. I panted for a moment, mentally recanted my hasty promises and began crawling to salvation when a vise-like grip seized my ankle.

I was pulled backwards and desperately gripped a metal stair. "Let go!" I cried. I saw my leg now protruded past the sharp edge of the hatch. The chief heaved himself up. He now hung halfway in, but I saw that the hatch would seal in seconds. We'd both be killed. He followed my glance and realized the same thing. His face lost its manic intensity as realization dawned. Our eyes met.

There was only one thing I could do. I had no choice. I kicked his face once and his grip loosened. Twice and he let go, snagging the hatch edge with his fingertips. On the third blow he dropped into the tiny details of the land far below. Maybe he landed safely, maybe on the stone stairs. I don't know. I hope so.

"You idiot," I said, as the line of light narrowed and disappeared with a pneumatic thump. I clambered up and brushed myself off. I heard, as I said, the rumbling mutter of far away engines. Condensation or lubricant dripped somewhere. The light fixtures popped and buzzed. The Doctor and the princess were discussing something in urgent whispers. But there was a missing sound, something I couldn't quite identify.

In the dim light ahead I saw two figured kneeling by a third. "Don't move him, not an inch!" warned the Doctor. I was sickened by the realization of what sound I'd been missing.

"It won't stop singing until it makes a kill," I thought.

The song was over and the spear was silent."

To Be Continued

Part 2

"Mr. Garron was dead," stated Bob Sunny Day.

"Dead as a doorknocker, Bob. Yes, he was dead."

I found it interesting that the security robot did not refer to Garron as the Graff Vynda-K and chanced a glance at my fellow prisoners to see if they'd noticed. The princess raised a perfect eyebrow. The Doctor was deep in thought, eyes closed and fingers moving like he was operating an invisible calculator. Then his eyes popped open and he grinned. Yes, they'd noticed.

Bob Name Your Poison broke the intermission. "Announcement. Announcement. Correlation of multiple verifier data and witness testimony confirms the individual known as Buckminster Garron is not the Graff Vynda-K. All charges of the detainees being associates of this individual are hereby dropped."

"Also," said Bob Sunny Day, "We're very sorry for the loss of your heterosexual life partner. Please accept our sincerest condolences."

"The stated expression of regret is a courtesy expression only and in no way an admission of legal culpability on the part of the Parallax corporation or its partners and subsidiaries," added Bob What A Deal.

I blinked, scratched an ear. The Doctor cleared his throat.

"That's it, then? We aren't under arrest?" he asked.

"Regretfully, Doctor, we must insist on your continued detention. We have yet to find the register, though we have ascertained an 87% probability that it is inside this tesseract device you spoke of, and therefore is with the body of the regrettably deceased Mr. Garron."

The Doctor snapped his fingers. "Of course! That explains why you're so intent on tracing our path! It doesn't explain why you don't just dial up a map, though."

"Regrettably, that function is inaccessible."

Whose interrogation was it anyway? I broke in.

"All right, all right. We'll try to help you find the way back to Garron's... body."

"That is to be desired."

"Agreed, Bobs. And after that, we fix everything, crisis averted, we all go home. Right?"

Bob Name Your Poison shook his head. "There are additional charges of unauthorized entry into staff-only zones, multiple counts of willful destruction of corporation property, unauthorized operation of corporation systems, conspiring to create civil unrest, inciting civil unrest, theft and unauthorized operation of a company vehicle for nefarious purposes, resisting arrest and failing to use proper body disposal protocols."

Bob Sunny Day asked, "Do you understand the new charges?"

"Yes, I understand the new charges. And no, we aren't guilty. I mean, we are, I suppose, but it wasn't our intent to cause trouble. I can't recall resisting arrest but I suppose we must have. We just just wanted to find the Doctor's ship and get out of here."

"We shall consider all extenuating circumstances as we determine your degree of guilt. Now, please continue your story."

"So, you really want to hear it all, huh? Well, all right.

There was an artifact from old Earth in the community center at the Darwin colony. It was an old style game, just loose pieces, cards and a faded board in a plain box, but I spent hours with it. Wish I knew what it was called.

Anyway, if you hooked it up to a power slot it was endless fun. The board was a funny picture of an unhappy man on an operating table. Parts of the surface were cut out, with a sensitive metal rim. Under the cutouts were holes in which you placed plastic joke organs, like a funny bone or a bucket signifying water on the knee. The goal was to earn money by pulling the plastic pieces out without touching the sides. You got a little pair of tweezers to do that. You had to be extremely careful not to touch the sides. If you did, a buzzer would sound and you didn't earn your fee.

Sometimes we'd play for real money like the grown-ups. I did very well after I discovered that a sonic pulse temporarily disabled the conductivity of the rim. Here, Doctor, why don't you play that pulse for our robotic friends here?"

"What is that device?" squawked Bob Name Your Poison.

"Don't be alarmed, fellows, it's only a screwdriver."

"This sound has invasive sonic properties! We demand it be stopped now or we will call the guards!"

"Relax, Bobs. It's not going to hurt you. Doctor, that should be enough. See? All done!"

"I must protest! Again your diversions seem irrelevant!"

"All right, all right. Don't pop a breaker. No harm done."

I looked at my communicator, yawned and stretched.

"Say, Bobs, I'm getting tired. Why don't we take a break? If I don't sleep I'm liable to forget the story, maybe miss an important clue you need."

"Very well. We will recommence the interrogation in twenty-four cycles."

On the way back to the interrogation room the next day I heard something. "Was that a shot?" I asked the guard.

He did not respond.

"I'm sure I heard a shot. Is there something happening?"

"It is none of your concern. There has been an incursion from below. It has happened before and will be dealt with. Here is the interrogation room. Have a fun day!"

The Doctor and princess were in their seats. I smiled at them and took mine.

"Good morning, Bobs. Shall we begin? We're about to discover your certain doom."

"We left Garron in Intercell Maintenance Corridor 12,675H. It was stenciled on the wall.

The Doctor said that it looked deserted for hundreds of years. He really seemed fascinated, like he was in his element. He tapped gauges and fiddled with control panels, scanned conduit junctions and yodeled down air shafts.

At one point, not far along, we skirted a small hole in the deck. The Doctor peered down, whistled softly, then pointed up. There was a corresponding hole in the ceiling. It wasn't natural; something had smashed through.

"A meteorite?" suggested the princess. The Doctor shook his head.

"No, see the edges? This was something very heavy, not something moving fast." He looked worried.

I peered down the hole. Far below I saw a tiny pinprick of light, and another far above.

"Let's keep moving. _Andele, andele_!"

Then the corridor split. Up a ramp, down a ramp, straight ahead.

"Which way?" asked the princess.

"Feel that?" asked the Doctor, "there's a breeze. _Ariba, ariba._"

'Up'. An hour ago we'd climbed through the sky. "Doctor," I said as we trudged upwards, "where are we, really? Rallax is supposed to be a planet, but this is a spaceship, isn't it?"

"It's a planet-sized spaceship."

"That control panel... it said 'wild adventure', like for tourists..."

"Yup."

"Then why haven't I ever heard about it? Something this big, you'd think they'd advertise."

He stopped at a panel. "Look. Mind the wasp's nest there."

(Incidentally, you Bobs need an exterminator. The tunnels are infested with vermin.)

He unscrewed the panel and set the lid aside. "Lots of big, standard industrial metal out here, right?" he said, gesturing to the corridor. "Now take a gander in there."

"What on Earth?" Under the panel the circuitry was totally unfamiliar, a dense assemblage of tiny geometric shapes in a glowing lattice.

"That, Unstoffe and Verne-Burroughs, is one of the most dangerously silly engineering designs I've seen. And believe me, I've seen my share. This is a hypersolid gravity circuit. Instead of manipulating energy, it uses gravity to manipulate matter. Now, see how the circuit doesn't touch the sides? It's held suspended by a mass nullifying inner cell. Can you tell me why that's necessary? Of course you can't! It's because those little doodads are dwarf star alloy and the connecting framework is plasmatic antimatter."

"I follow what you're saying, but I keep up with new tech and this is all unfamiliar to me. Is it alien?" I asked.

"No, not at all. See the nameplate there? 'Made in Oslo'."

"But..."

"Peter, don't strain yourself," said the princess, calling me 'Peter'. "I have an insane notion. Doctor, those numbers there: One-nine-zero-eight-four-eight... is that a serial number or a date?"

"Oh, very good!" He beamed at her (she seemed pleased), then cleared his throat and continued. "It all fits. The language, the robots, the staggering hubris. Hypersolids! Hypersolids! Those idiots!"

He replaced the lid. "Let's keep moving."

He hurried off. I trotted to keep up.

"Doctor, you didn't answer her question."

Ignoring me, he said, "Remember the hole back there? What happens to dwarf star alloy when its mass nullification field collapses?" Correctly interpreting our silence as understanding, he continued, "In fact, what happens to a mass nullification field when its environmental parameters change and there's no-one to adjust the frequency?"

He skirted a second hole in the deck without a pause. I stopped and peered down. I saw sunlight far below. With a shudder, I pictured what had happened. With the decay of the null field, each tiny bit of circuitry regained its weight. And a mere grain of dwarf alloy weighs tons. Before the field failed totally it would rip loose and crash down through endless layers until reaching the center. And if this was happening all over Rallax, that meant that a solid mass of hypergrav material was accumulating at the core. And that was affecting the remaining, functioning null fields in turn... I studied the ceiling, thought of all that weight overhead and cringed when it creaked.

"Doctor!" I called as I rushed after them, "How long? How long until it all goes?"

Back in the interrogation room, all three robots turned to the Doctor. He pretended to study the ceiling until their steady gaze became too much. "Oh, all right! But I've already told you once."

"Nevertheless, we are keenly interested in our long term prospects."

He pyramided his fingers. "I'd say – and this is just an educated guess – you've got about, oh, two Earth years. You'll be glued to the deck by then. Anything living will long since have died except for the cockroaches. Cheeky little buggers. Things will accelerate after that – in about six months the whole lot will implode and this will become a small star. Or a black hole; I'm not sure. Something bad at any rate."

"A star, Doctor? How is this possible?"

"It's possible because your foolish architects built this world using quadrillions of tons of dwarf star matter held suspended in unstable NG grids. Where on Earth did they find that much dwarf alloy? Well, not on Earth, obviously, but where? That's what I'd like to know."

"But what do we do?"

He peered at them. A shadow of a sneer crossed his lips.

"Do? What do you do? Unless you lot suddenly become engineers instead of re-purposed cruise directors, you do nothing. There are millions of circuits to be calibrated. Unless there are more of you than we've seen, it would take you decades. Assuming you had the proper tools and knew how to use them."

He slumped in his chair. "You're doomed. I'm so sorry."

Bob Sunny Day said, "Fiddlesticks!"

"Indeed. Although..."

"Yes, Doctor?"

The interrogation room was silent, but I heard syncopated running in the corridor. A distant boom sent mild vibrations through my shoes. Somewhere people were shouting. Our captors ignored it all, intent on the Doctor's next words.

"If I had the registry, I could stop the warps. That will buy you some time. And maybe, just maybe, I can use its control circuits to jump start your self-repair systems. So let's take care of finding Garron, shall we? Unstoffe, it's time to continue."

"At the top of the ramp we found a larger passage and continued down it. After an hour or so we began to hear a distant, steady roar and a breeze began to push at our backs. This intensified as we advanced until it became a struggle to keep our feet. The Doctor hardly seemed to notice; the princess had to clutch my arm to stay upright. I didn't mind.

"Follow me!" cried the Doctor over the howling wind. "It won't be bad after we pass the intake!"

He pointed to another ramp that terminated at a huge baffled grill. We could easily walk upright through the vanes. Well, that is, if they weren't crashing open and shut in unison with each variance in the airflow.

"Are you mad, Doctor?" I shouted. Here atop the ramp the roar and crashing was deafening.

The wind snatched away his response. I asked again and he indicated his ear – 'I can't hear you' or 'Look! Mine are smaller than yours.'

We resorted to shouting, mime and charades. The result was something like this-

"We'll be crushed!"

"Nonsense! It's all in the timing! Watch!"

At that, he stood at the vent, inches from the snapping vanes. I got the sense he was counting, then he casually stepped through. I hated him a little for that.

"Our turn!" yelled the princess, tugging my arm.

I dared not show cowardice, so I let her pull me forward. This close, I could feel each resounding bang in my bones. The random motion of the huge objects and the intermittent glimpses of a huge, bright gulf on the other side made me light-headed. The princess thought she saw an opening but I wouldn't be moved. She frowned up at me, irritated. "Any time now!"

At that moment the concert of disconcert reached a climax in my poor brain. My cowardice and my burning desire to appear brave reached some harmonic resonance and suddenly a deep calm seeped into me. The wind faded to a whisper and the vanes moved very slow and without thinking I knew I could anticipate their movement. I wish I could claim credit for what happened next, I really do. But I don't remember. Did I begin to faint and merely stumble forward?Did the princess pull me? Did a gust of wind push me? Did I achieve harmony with the universe of time and movement? I don't know... but suddenly I was on the other side and jogging easily out of the current into a steady and not unpleasant breeze.

And then I saw our surroundings and was struck awestruck. Awestricken.

It's funny how our minds comprehend scale, isn't it? The jungle below was a single huge room but it was so well disguised its proportions didn't really register. But this! The princess and I simply stood and tried to drink it in. In sips.

We looked out from the lower curve of a tunnel that spanned the horizons. No, 'tunnel' doesn't do. It was an expanse, an extent, a gulf. It was easily an orbital mile in diameter. An endless artificial sun sent dancing shafts of gold through the misty clouds that scuttled along the ceiling.

Vines and creepers climbed the terraced walls and flocks of parrots dipped and darted among them. This puzzled me at first, then I realized the tunnel was landscaped. There were trees, ponds, fountains, steppes and levels built up the curving walls. More than a functional air vent, then. This was meant to impress visitors. I saw the unmistakable signs of a thoroughfare; huge holosigns and service buildings arrayed in a straight line near the lowest point of the curve. I saw no real road, though – just an unmaintained strip of grass. I envisioned it as it must have been before service ended and saw that it would have been quite lovely, like an endless green valley.

It was humbling. I felt the princess's hand find mine.

"Well, this is something to tell the grand-bears," she whispered.

Well, stagger me speechless. Luckily the Doctor called and I didn't have to respond.

"Are you two going to stand there like newlyweds seeing the Niagara Nebula for the first time or are you coming with me to, I don't know, use these pods to escape?"

He waited a bit further down the curve by what I saw was a decrepit maglev transpod station. When we moved toward him he turned to the open hatch of a pod and I heard his sonic screwdriver trilling. The side of each dingy pod was labeled 'Parallax'."

"Hey, we wondered about that; is Rallax a corruption of Parallax? Did the name degrade through the centuries until the lost inhabitants here forgot its very meaning?"

"No. Parallax is the corporate entity, Rallax is the resort. There is no corruption," said Bob Sunny Day.

"Oh, okay. That's rather disappointing."

"It may please you to know that escapees from Viking Bay believed they lived on a world named Raw Ox."

"Oh! Thanks, Bob. There's hope for you yet!"

"Anyway, the Doctor soon had us humming along. The maglev rails were buried beneath the grass strip but the giant holosigns and the pod's onboard pop-up display showed us the routes. I don't know what was more distracting – the section designations on the signs or the scenery we traveled through. I'm afraid we were distracted by the signs at first. They gave estimated arrival times to resort environments and showed little scenes of the fun a tourist could expect. Can I just say that some tourist's idea of 'fun' is not what I'd choose?

We read the names on the signs as we passed entry ports.

A visitor to "Armagideon Time" apparently fought giant bugs and atomic zombies in a post-apocalyptic ruin.

In "Suburban Sprawl" one could experience an endless, sunny weekend in a setting of old Earth's 1950s, which apparently were 'family friendly' and centered on something called a bar-b-q.

The politically-minded could fight for capital independence in "Colonial Conflict".

"Wizards and Warriors" looked fun, though. I rather fancied being a wizard.

"Destroy All Daleks" is pretty self-explanatory. The Doctor frowned after he noticed it was marked, 'Out of Order'.

Come to mention it, a disturbing number of the destinations were Out of Order. At Shawneequa's suggestion the Doctor checked Wild Adventure on the pod computer and found it to be considered operational. I shuddered as I pondered what constituted Out of Order. Was it total loss of life support? I imagined lights or heating failing, madness and panic erupting among the residents. Was Suburban Sprawl, designated Out of Order, inhabited by roaming mole-people, scavenging blindly in the frozen ruins for the last rancid scraps of bar-b-q? Or was it merely a vast, dark crypt now? How much of this world was dead, for that matter? Despite gliding through a tube so gargantuan it had its own weather, I felt mild flickers of claustrophobia.

But that wasn't all. The vent (we later learned it and dozens like it were called, 'Garden Highways') showed every sign of habitation. Here and there we spotted clear evidence – a herd of sheared sheep, wagon ruts in the mud, abandoned campsites. I wish I could tell you more about the natives, but we never saw them; were they peaceful traders, maybe traveling between different sections of the ship? Or were they roving marauders, attacking wherever they could gain egress?

My pessimistic reverie was interrupted by a cry of, "Whoa!" from the Doctor and a deepening of the maglev hum. He'd seen something and slammed on the brakes.

"What's wrong?" I asked, but he'd already climbed out. The princess shot me a glance and followed. The pod's screen said we were near the entrance to "Red Revolution".

Wishing I didn't have to, I left the vehicle. Then I wished I hadn't. The machines here had broken down.

It was freezing. Mist hugged the icy ground. Snowflakes drifted toward us from the darkness.

We'd stopped close to the holosign for this area. It flickered and popped but I saw the depicted scene clearly enough – a mob of commoners fighting antique soldiers in front of a burning palace.

Past the sign a portion of the light strip had failed. Far ahead beyond the tunnel's horizon I saw normal illumination resumed, but here all was murky twilight. In the gloom I could see flickering orange lights moving toward us – people (I hoped) carrying torches.

A vehicle – an old combustion-engine ground-car, black and shiny – was parked on our path. It was riddled with holes and I heard the tick of a cooling engine. I heard the Doctor tell Shawneequa it hadn't been there long.

I had a bad feeling. This looked like an escape attempt and believe me I know an escape attempt when I see one. "Doctor," I said, "people are coming. I'm not sure we should get involved here."

In my experience, the pursuers are always a dodgier proposition than the pursued. I'm invariably the latter.

He didn't respond for a moment, then turned from where he'd been peering into the vehicle. His expression was strange. "Walk away or stay and help? That's the question, isn't it?" I could tell he wasn't thinking about the current situation. But then he looked back inside the car. "I haven't been very wise lately, Unstoffe. I broke some rules, some bad things happened and now I'm running from the consequences. Just like this poor man."

I saw that a dying man was lying down across the front seat, caught by lightbeams shining through the bullet holes in the chassis. He was twitching, coughing blood. It was ugly.

"Can I really just leave him to die?"

The door was locked, so the Doctor slapped the glass. No response – the man was insensate. Deciding he couldn't hear us, I knocked four times on the door. The Doctor twitched and glared at me but it did the trick. Very slowly the man grasped the steering wheel and pulled himself up. He blinked up at us, exhausted, then willed himself to unlock the door.

It swung open and he spilled onto the frozen grass before we could catch him. He stared up, his eyes unfocused. "Sir," he said, with gasping pauses between each word, "you must turn back. Yaka pursues." I studied the approaching torches with new trepidation. The princess seemed to sense my disquiet and jogged a few paces toward the darkness. I saw her shade her eyes and cup her ear.

"The revolution," the man continued, "begins. The bells have rung."

The princess returned. "It's about a dozen men on some sort of animals. Armed with rifles and swords. We'd better decide what we're doing," she began, "they'll be here in..." She trailed off, her eyes widening. I glanced down and saw the dying man's eyes had focused. He glared at her.

"You! How can you be here?" he snarled. "I have renounced your master and I will not be taken!"

He reached into his coat with shocking speed and aimed a pistol at the Princess. I grabbed his arm as he pulled the trigger. The gun banged and with sheer disbelief at the unfairness of it all I saw one of the approaching torches fly back and down, swatted by an invisible hand. An angry clamor arose and I heard shouted orders. Their mounts roared and bellowed. By the gods, what were they? As they surged toward us I had an impression of hulking, shaggy bodies and great, ice-crunching paws. Then a bullet ricocheted off the car's fender and another caused a grass eruption at the Doctor's feet. The princess leaped and deftly plucked the gun from the man's hand. She smoothly rolled behind the car and returned fire. Another torch fell with each shot, four in all.

"What are you doing?" cried the Doctor. "Stop that!"

"Too late for that!" she replied. Then the pistol clicked. "Never mind! I'm out of bullets! Now what?"

"Back to the pod!" I called from halfway there.

The Doctor made an anguished, exasperated groan and said, "Yes! That's a good idea! Run!" The princess followed him and we reached the pod at the same time, the thundering pursuit drawing closer and closer. Gruff voices demanded we halt and a few more shots were fired.

We tried, Bobs, we really tried but we couldn't outrun bears. That's what the Doctor called them, 'bears'. Actually, he called them 'great honking huge grizzly bears', though I never heard one honk.

No sooner had I a leg in than we were surrounded. The massive creatures encircled us, their riders aiming rifles and glaring at us from behind fierce beards. They wore rough tunics with fur collars and bandoliers. One called back, "Outlanders, sir! Should we kill them?" and waited hopefully for a positive reply.

A man in a smart uniform approached on the largest bear of all. He took his damned time, too, pausing to shoot the man on the ground (who was crawling away with surprising energy) and direct a man to collect him. From his bearing (excuse me) I could tell he was a soldier. He wasn't dressed like the others, though. I recognized his uniform from the _Indomitable Prince's_ laundry and had seen it in action on Ribos only days before. This was another of the Graff's men.

"Yaka, I presume?" asked the Doctor.

The officer removed his cylindrical helmet and regarded us coldly. Saying nothing, he slowly reloaded his gun. When finished, he holstered it and rested his hands on the bear saddle's pommel. Then - "You've spoken to Spidrick, then. Yes, I am Yaka. Perhaps you would do me the courtesy of identifying yourselves? You, woman – step out from behind the peasant so I can see you."

"Hello, Yaka," said the princess. "How have you been?"

I lack the stomach to dwell on what happened next. Yaka leaped from his bear, the princess swept by me and suddenly they were embracing. I had to turn my head when they kissed. The Cossacks (the Doctor told me the name later) all looked in directions that didn't include their leader playing tonsil hockey, though the bears watched with confused fascination. I saw the Doctor's eyebrow trying to hide under his hairline. Our eyes locked. His expression wasn't far off from the bear's.

I saw him resolve to say something. "Well! It's nice to be among friends for once, isn't it, Unstoffe? The land downstairs was terribly unsocial. Now, if you'll point the way to the upper decks we'll be on our way and you two can carry on getting... reacquainted and... stuff. Won't that be nice?"

Yaka came up for air, murmured, "Shoot them," and dived in again.

And that's what they did.

In my career as a freelance realtor I've had the opportunity of visiting numerous clinks, jails, detention areas and prisons. I've been in suspended animation, solitary confinement and chain gangs. Run the gamut, I have, from titanium megasec cells to mud huts.

The sound of hammering woke me up and added another to my catalogue.

This one was what I consider your average low tech holding cell. Brick walls, bars on the window, stout door with two little sliding panels; one up high to taunt you through and one at floor level for your gourmet swill of the day. A bunk bed, a cot, a water toilet and a sink. Classic.

After dismissing the possibility of an ironic afterlife I noticed the Doctor seemed to still be alive as well. He turned from the window and said, "Welcome back, Unstoffe my boy! You aren't going to believe this!"

"We aren't dead," I noted. "I distinctly remember a hail of bullets."

The Doctor resumed his delighted inspection. "Amusement park bullets, Unstoffe. Probably packed with nanotech assemblers; you get shot, they start healing you right away. Can't have the tourists really offing each other, can you? It'd be murder on repeat business. Let's just be grateful they didn't set those great honking huge grizzly bears on us."

"That is a relief, though I'd rather not be hurt at all."

"Yup. I hear ya. You're lucky, though. For a few more days you'll probably be nearly immortal. Thing is, my own healing properties and these nanos aren't getting along. Ouch."

"Are you all right?"

"I will be."

I warily probed my injury collection; shoulder, head. All healed. All my physical injuries, at least. One thing still hurt.

"The princess seemed to know that man."

"Told you she was a princess, did she?" said a voice from above, "Convincing little minx, I'll give her that."

A man reclined on the top bunk. I disliked him immediately. I'm a sloucher with a simpleton's face; this man was a romantic action hero in the Levithian mode – chiseled features, proud mustache and rippling muscle.

It was the man from the car, Spidrick. He wasn't dead, either.

"Explain," I said, "What do you mean?"

"I mean she's an actress with a face-job. One of the Graff's schemes."

I felt anger boiling up but didn't know where to direct it. The princess wasn't a princess? She was in league with the Graff Vynda-K?

"Easy, Unstoffe," said the Doctor.

"Why was she in storage in a cryoglove, then?"

"His Highness didn't need her after the real princess was rescued, did he? Girl on a ship full of soldiers? Bad for morale. Look at what happened to Yaka." He noticed my obvious distress. "Oh, she suckered you good, didn't she? Regular little con artist, she is. Sorry, lad."

The princess was a con artist? She'd lied to me? Wait! That wasn't necessarily a bad thing, was it? My mind raced. Potential futures began to repopulate my mind. Um, never mind why, Bobs."

Bob Sunny Day said, "Mr. Unstoffe, your continued pretense at living a lawful lifestyle is quite unnecessary. We know you have attempted to mislead us."

"Oh, fine, then. But why did you let me carry on?"

"We are programmed for humor, human. Our circuits were tickled. Now enough of this. Garron and you were criminals. You were confidence men,"

'Hucksters," That was Bob What a Deal.

"And swindlers," said Bob Name Your Poison.

"What Huey, Dewey and Louie are trying to say is that I already told them," said the Doctor. "A top security agent holds no secrets from his peers, after all." He winked at the princess.

"All right, all right. Very well. I immediately started fantasizing what it would be like if the princess joined me and Garron. Well, then I remembered Garron was dead. Replace Garron, then. A girl's a real asset on a team, you know. Garron can pour on the charm but he isn't pretty. Having the princess as a front woman... imagine the possibilities. I resolved to mention it to her. And then I remembered Yaka.

"What happened with Yaka, then?" I asked Spidrick.

"You have to ask? She was off-limits. Yaka disobeyed orders. Being the Graff's cousin, he's always felt a bit more entitled than the rest of us. She goes to the freezer and he's suddenly point-man. And I'm his partner so I'm point-man, too."

The Doctor interrupted. "Unstoffe, forget about the princess for a minute. Spidrick, how did you and Yaka come to be here? We heard the Graff attacked Rallax?"

The man Spidrick climbed down and drank from the sink. Then he sat on the bottom bunk and studied us.

Uncomfortable under his appraisal, I had a quick look outside. It was a high-walled courtyard, built in the popular 'brooding edifice' style but with touches of the alien. The minarets reminded me of Ribos, for instance. Near our position the view accorded by an open drawbridge teased of a gloomy city beyond. On the opposite side a gate led to the grounds of a magnificent palace. Beyond the wall I saw snow-topped pines, spires and curling smoke. Above it all the low sky hung grey and featureless.

The courtyard buzzed with life. Men in uniform practiced on parade, tended to bears and as indicated, hammered wood. I wondered, not for the first time, why those keen on executions don't just keep scaffolds on hand. They always have to build them outside your cell window. Contractual sadism, I suppose.

This was just a glance, mind you and not being an astute student of early Earth history I must confess I didn't realize the bears and the ornithopters were anachronistic. I was most impressed by the colossal patriotic statues I saw looming above the skyline.

I was burning with questions about the princess but I knew misdirection when I heard it. I realized the Doctor didn't want Spidrick wondering how and where we'd met her. That would lead to awkward questions about the Graff, wouldn't it? I kept my peace and let him talk.

"All right. I suppose you did try to help me," he said, "Maybe if I give you a sitrep we can help each other. First, the Graff didn't attack Rallax. He answered a distress call. A delegation of people and robots met us. Some of the people were aliens, ones we'd never seen. They told us something had happened to their ship. Ship! We thought it was a planet."

"So did we," I said.

"It's big. I knew the Graff was already sizing it up as a potential asset to the war effort, but he acted his part as the valiant rescuer. He listened while they told us that soon after her inaugural launch the warp engines had come on line. They were in permanent orbit around some star, you know, and the engines were for emergencies only. But the engines fired, they warped and suddenly they were here and everything was wrong. They couldn't raise their headquarters and the few signals they could receive were strange. And then a passing farm freighter told them the date. You aren't going to believe this, but..."

"But Rallax is a product of the Fourth Great and Bountiful Human Empire. One hundred and eighty-seven thousand, six hundred and seventy years in the future. Give or take a few centuries," said the Doctor. We stared.

He shrugged. "What? I read it somewhere."

Spidrick continued. "I don't know anything about a bountiful empire, but yeah, you're right. 200,000 years, they told us. Somehow that warp made them move in time. Crazy, huh? Time travel's one of the greatest weapons ever and a bunch of tourists discover it by accident. Thing is, it messed up the ship. There was supposed to be an orbital bridge; that's where all the technicians and officers were stationed. It didn't survive the trip. They showed us the wreckage, strewn over half the northern hemisphere."

"Surely there were some technicians here," I said.

"Just a handful. Fewer by the time we arrived. They tried to jury-rig the garbage disposal system as a substitute for the busted transmat but no-one returned."

I thought about gods falling from the sky and shuddered.

"But what about the robots? Couldn't they do the repairs?"

"We asked the same thing. They were insulted at the idea. Some future custom or other. No robot technicians and no robot security. Just tour staff, historical reenactors, bartenders... that sort of thing. Menials."

"Spidrick," the Doctor asked, "we were attacked by armed Rallaxan robots in armour..."

"Yeah, I seen 'em before, upstairs. They must have been reprogrammed after the Graff left."

"Why did the Graff leave?" I asked. It seemed to me he'd have valued a mobile planet. Why was he bothering with Ribos?

Spidrick's face darkened. He was reluctant to talk about it.

"See, the thing is... Listen, I'm a proud citizen. I willingly serve the Levithian throne. And like it or not, that's the Graff Vynda-K. May the gods forgive my treason, but I was coming to doubt my Lord's fitness... I hate to say it, but - "

Suddenly there were four loud knocks. I swear, the Doctor almost hit the ceiling. I didn't remember him being this twitchy on Ribos.

"You may hate to say it, but I have no such reservations!" declared a voice through the door panel, "the Graff was a tyrant and a fool."

"Yaka!" snarled Spidrick, rushing to the door. "Open this and face me, you coward!"

"Back, dog!"

"Better a dog than a traitor!"

"Better a traitor to a madman than a dog to an lost cause!"

"Better a dog to a lost cause than a mad cyborg monk's lickspittle!"

They both snarled at the Doctor, "What are you laughing at?"

He beamed at them affectionately, with crinkly eyes and a huge smirky smile, then burst into laughter again.

"Oh," he said, "I'm sorry, gentlemen..."

Then I began chuckling, too. "Lickspittle!"

After a moment Spidrick joined in and I decided he was all right. Yaka just glared and bristled his mustache. "Stop this at once! You are prisoners of the Tsar Nick and you will demonstrate proper respect!" He, on the other hand, was all wrong.

"Gone a bit native, hasn't he?" I whispered to the Doctor, who nodded.

Spidrick spoke calmly to Yaka, as one would to an old friend one has realized is a few sandwiches short of a picnic. "Oh, Yaka. Stop playing this game. The park is closed, brother, and you must stop persecuting those who wish to leave."

"Foolishness. They have everything they need. Under the Tsar, all men are fed and cared for. There is no want in this land, no conflict save that which you and your underground rabble have instigated."

He leaned close to the window. "Spidrick, we could have ruled here! I will rule here! I will raise an army and march on the other lands! Then, when they are subdued, we will move out into the galaxy!"

The Doctor rolled his eyes. I tried not to chuckle.

"The robots won't let you," said Spidrick, "Rasputin and the Tsar will put you in the garbage chute before they allow you to raise an army. You know that!"

"Excuse me," said the Doctor, "Your exquisitely detailed plans to conquer the universe are compelling and all but, well, there's this snag."

"A snag? What snag is this?"

"It's just that everyone on Rallax is going to be dead within a year. Maybe two."

"It's true," I added, "Have you seen the holes in the decks? It's this gravity circuitry they use. It's made of dwarf alloy and it's slipping out of containment."

"I'm just a soldier," said Spidrick, "What does that mean?"

"It means the gravity here is going to keep getting stronger until the whole thing implodes."

"What lies are these?" scoffed Yaka, "I will hear no more of this. 'Gravity circuits'! Lennonist nonsense! Enjoy your last evening, gentlemen and dog. At dawn you die!"

The panel snapped shut. His brisk boot steps receded. A distant outer door clanged.

Spidrick said, "This is true? We are all doomed?"

"Never mind that!" I said, "'At dawn you die', remember?"

"And never mind that!" said the Doctor, "Spidrick, how did the two of you come here? Obviously the Graff left you, I understand that much, but why? How?"

"We may as well sit. We have until dawn."

"Oh, I've no intention of being here at dawn."

"You have an escape plan, then?"

"Well, not as such, no. More of an expectation. But I promise you we'll get out of here. I just don't know how, yet. Unstoffe? Any ideas?"

It was nice to be asked. "Not yet, Doctor. But even if we get out of this cell, there are bears. And after the bears there's a wall and a city filled with who-knows-what. Say, Spidrick, how many of these people are robots?"

"Oh, let's see. The royals and the monk are robots. Lennon and his advisors; Starr, Sverdlov and the others, are robots. The Cossacks are robots (this impressed me greatly, by the way, remembering their authentic body odor) and so are the bears. Everyone else is human or alien, though the aliens have all been sent north. The loyalists, that's Yaka's crowd out there, are mostly descended from the tourists; the freedom fighters are descendants of crew. They remember where they are, who they are, keep the knowledge alive. They're looking for a way out. Thought I'd found it too, back where we were captured – sorry about the gun, by the way – but Yaka's spies sniffed me out."

"You're getting ahead of yourself," said the Doctor.

"Oh, yeah. Right. Where was I?"

"You said the Graff made a mistake."

"Yes... remember I said the bridge was destroyed? Well, the Graff found out that the ship's registry had been salvaged and was in a repair bay. He volunteered to look at it, see if one of our tech boys could do something. Well, we discovered that the thing was still functioning. With a bit of fine-tuning and some servers, the planet could be controlled remotely. We'd had a shore leave on Aye Aye a few months before. Ever hear of it? Rogue colony of scientists for hire? We'd made some trades, forged some contacts. Old Sholakh told us the Graff planned to hack-"

Back in the interrogation room, the Doctor interrupted my telling of Spidrick's story. "Oh, we don't need to get into all the details, do we?"

"Oh, right. Anyway, Bobs, Spidrick told us that the Graff stole the registry..."

"That is correct! We must have have the registry if we are resume control of this vessel!"

"Yes, we've established that. Unfortunately, in their state of disgrace, Yaka and Spidrick were ordered to cover the retreat and were stunned by your predecessors. No sooner had the Graff blasted off then Rallax warped again."

"Yes. It is hundreds of annual time measurements since the attack. The two soldiers were put in stasis and forgotten."

"Spidrick told us they woke up a few years ago. I guess the system failed. They explored a bit, got lost in corridors and then found themselves in Red Revolution. Hundreds of years later, as you say, but only weeks for them."

I stood at the window as Spidrick described how the two had attempted to blend into the society they found here. Yaka, attracted to power, ingratiated himself to Rasputin the mad cyborg monk and rapidly rose through the ranks. Spidrick, after failing to rediscover the remote cave they'd entered through, had gone the route of vodka and dissolution, sinking until he met the revolution. That is, the few descendants of the crew who knew they were still on a starship and refused to participate in the mandatory annual revolution.

"They didn't want to live lives of indolence," he said, "They craved real life, real risk. They wanted the stars. I agreed to help and before I knew it John Lennon himself declared me their leader."

"Good grief! Where did these people learn their history?"

"Why? What's the matter, Doctor?"

"I wouldn't know where to start," muttered the Doctor. "All right. You got in good with the Bolsheviks. Then what happened?"

"Suddenly Yaka and I became opponents."

"You were friends before?" asked the Doctor softly.

"We were blood brothers. Now we are enemies, but not by my choice. I would save him if I could. His ambition will kill him."

The Doctor did not reply. Our questions exhausted, our common ground plowed, we retreated to our own thoughts. The night settled in.

I lay on the bunk and watched the artificial stars reel across the artificial heavens. Far away, wolves howled at the same sky. I envied their perspective.

The Doctor shook me awake. I blinked at the morning sun, wondering where I was and mildly pleased I didn't know. Then I heard a familiar voice cry, "Prepare for inspection!" and I remembered.

I stumbled to the window. Spidrick stood aside and I peered out.

The Tsar's carpenters did a good job. A three-man gallows stood in the courtyard. Already a small crowd was gathering; some escorted at gunpoint. Above them Yaka stood on the high platform, inspecting the trap door mechanisms and tugging the nooses. My heart leaped when I spotted the princess, flanked by hulking Cossacks, at the gallows steps. She seemed very small there, resplendent as she was in a white furred coat and hat. She seemed to sense my presence or maybe it was just a coincidence or maybe she just assumed we'd be watching; she turned, looked at our window and raised her hands. They were bound.

"Doctor, do you see that?" I asked.

"I saw it earlier. The Tsar's carpenters did a good job."

"Doctor, no. It's Shawneequa. She's a prisoner, too."

"Oh, really? That's interesting, innit?"

"We have to save her!"

He considered this. "Well... Normally I'd agree, certainly..."

From outside we heard, "Fetch the prisoners!"

"... but I'm terribly sorry to say, she's on her own."

I watched a delegation of troops march toward our prison.

Spidrick grunted. "I'm wouldn't worry, my new friend. I suspect she is playing some game even now. Her aptitude for manipulation will serve her well, I think."

That was rather unfair, I thought. The princess was a genuine, warm person, not someone playing a game.

And then something struck me. A game? We'd been forgetting something.

Games. Bullets that don't kill. Robotic Cossacks. Annual revolutions. _Games_.

"Doctor? Spidrick?"

I guess the Doctor heard something in my voice.

"I have had a thought."

"I gather this is an event of note?" said Spidrick. I ignored him.

"This is all fake, correct? Oh, these walls are real brick and these bars are steel, but this wasn't built as a prison, was it?"

The Doctor shushed Spidrik. "Go on."

The outer door clanged open. Marchers approached. I spoke rapidly.

"What I mean is, it's fictional, right? It's built for people to play a game in. And who wants to play prisoner-"

The Doctor leaped to his feet. "-if there's no hope of escape! Unstoffe! You're brilliant!" he said, "Now, tap those flagstones! Spidrick, check the walls for hidden panels! I'll inspect the sink!"

Not to blow my own stupplehorn, but I am brilliant, you know? The sink and the platform beneath pivoted to expose a dark opening, a ladder leading below. We wasted no time. I went last, replacing the sink as I went. The tunnel below, forgotten for centuries, was warm, dry and dimly lit by oil lamps. We were at its very end. Every cell, I saw, had an egress here. We stood at the bottom, grinning at the cries of consternation above.

"We'd best not linger," cautioned Spidrick, "they aren't total fools."

Judging by the rapping sounds from above, he was right. I glanced right and saw the Doctor was studying the floor. "Look, Unstoffe," he said. A line of royally petite footprints were clearly visible in the dust. They led to a small table at tunnel's end and back toward the palace. They were overlaid by another, larger pair, and there were signs of a scuffle. Our equipment - my communicator, the Doctor's Sonic, Spidrick's gun – was arranged on the table.

"She knew we'd escape," I said, "and she was caught! Now we have to save her!"

"Right!" said the Doctor, and, "Honor demands it," said Spidrick, reaching for the gun.

"I wonder why this is still all here, though, if she was caught?" I wondered.

Quick as a Happy Harbor Mirthscorpion, the Doctor grabbed Spidrick's arm and motioned for us to freeze. A thin cord, nearly invisible, ran from each object and over the table edge. He bent at the waist and peered underneath. "Oh. Good question, Unstoffe. Here's your answer."

Garron had this thing for old-style flatties. He said they were more believable than holos. I don't know about that, but some of them were fun to watch, even if you couldn't pick your perspective and had to watch from a fixed vantage point. There were the classics, like 'Agent Ex' and 'Brillig', but Garron's favorite was 'The Deviant Trio', a psychological study of violent mental instabilities. The three main characters suffered from a wide variety of developmental syndromes and emotional problems. I found it rather distressing viewing but Garron, for some reason, thought it was hilarious. Anyway, there was a scene of the three of them trying to dispose of an explosive, a round bomb they tossed to each other as its fuse burned lower and lower. Finally, their sadistic leader, Moe, pretended he wanted the bomb and the masochist Larry and the holy fool Curly took it from him and were caught in the explosion.

So there's Spidrick, myself, the Doctor and a bomb under a table. We looked at it and each other and reached the same unspoken conclusions. We didn't have time to defuse it. We couldn't just leave our stuff. But if one of us grabbed the equipment, shielded it with his body and ran as fast as he could... well, there was a chance. But who would do the noble deed?

Blessing Garron's questionable taste, I remembered Moe.

"I'll do it," I said, with my most earnest, 'umble sincerity. "You two run down the corridor. I still have active nanos, so I'll survive. Doctor, you said your nanos were wonky so it's too dangerous for you: you might die. And Spidrick, if this doesn't work the Doctor will need your knowledge of the area to escape." I grasped their arms in manly supplication. "Just promise me you'll save the princess."

Flush with the certainty of their noble objections, I airily dismissed them.

Once again proving life is crueler than fiction, they legged it.

Spidrick grasped my shoulders and kissed my cheek. "Good man!" he said, and sprinted away. The Doctor grinned, clapped my arm and trotted off. Over his shoulder he said, "Good plan, Unstoffe, good plan!" Then, I swear, he said 'Woot-woot-woot' as he retreated. Just like Curly."

"Oh I never! You're just imagining things!" laughed the Doctor. The three Bobs looked him, curious.

"Honestly... I've never heard of these 'deviants'. Anyway, Unstoffe, you survived, didn't you? I knew you would, anyway. No way would Yaka have blown up his own prison. Honestly, 'Curly'!" He crossed his arms and slumped in his chair and muttered, "Everyone knows Shemp was funnier."

"Hummph! Yes, I survived. I took careful hold of the communicator and the sonic (ignoring the sturdy pistol), braced myself and leaped away. My feet had not touched the floor when I saw the flash. Then I was picked up, hit the ceiling head first and mercifully blacked out. I was getting good at blacking out, wasn't I? Hope it never comes up again, but still... handy in a crisis.

For example, I apparently slept through yet another thrilling series of dangerous adventures, which suits me fine. With Spidrick lugging me on his back, they made their way through the maze of palace tunnels and secret passages. They had several close calls with the Imperial forces but finally found an actual secret entrance to the Rallax service tunnels. In short order they found the central control complex and emergency medical bay and that's where I woke up a stiff neck, a sore back and a firm resolve to never, ever again attempt reverse psychology.

I lay there, lulled by the comforting bloops and beeps of technology, when I began to discern the Doctor and Spidrick's voices. Reluctantly, I began to climb off the auto-doc when I was gently restrained.

"Hold your horses, hero," said a familiar voice, and the princess loomed into view. "Let the table decide if you can get up."

"You mean 'hold my bears', surely," I said.

She shushed me with a finger to my lips and spoke to a console. "Scan for release," she said, and the unit hummed.

"Approved," said a kindly, mechanical voice, "Have a healthy day!"

"Let's go see what those maniacs are up to," said the princess, helping me up, "You've missed quite a bit."

"Princess, 'a bit'?"

She laughed. "A lot, then. I'll bring you up to speed. Mind the step, there."

I'd been out for nearly half a day, it transpired. The Doctor had taken one look at the control room and gleefully gone to work. He'd taken a census (You have over 120,000 living residents there, Bobs. Did you realize that?), pinpointed the princess's location by the process of elimination and remotely ordered two robotic Cossacks to escort her here.

After assuring themselves of her integrity they'd allowed her to sit with me.

Spidick grinned over a cigar. "Here comes trouble, then. Feeling fit, lad?"

I drank in the room. Consoles and monitors were everywhere; on one wall was an interactive map of the entirety of Red Revolution. I saw weather machines, robot override switches, food distribution controls. Two hulking Cossacks guarded the door. On one on screen I saw Yaka pacing and shouting at Tsar Nick, who stroked his long white beard and tickled the ear of a large deer, one of a small herd lounging prettily about the throne room.

Distracted though I was by the princess's proximity, I immediately saw the possibilities.

And what possibilities! From this single room a clever man could control the world.

The Doctor read my expression. "Oh, he likes it, doesn't he?" He spun his chair. "Now that we're all here, down to business! What shall it be?"

Shawnee said, "A surprise abdication by Rasputin and the Tsar?"

The Doctor sneered. "Trust a princess to think of that. No, there would be a run on the throne. It would be chaos."

I said, "Not if their replacement is seen to have the support of the Cossacks."

Spidrick nodded. "It's true. None dare oppose the Cossacks, not even the army. Not since Yaka supplied them with swords."

The Doctor tapped a console with his index finger, thinking. I smiled when I saw Rasputin, his steel skull glinting in the torchlight, in the same pose on a monitor behind him. He even looked a bit like the previous Doctor who, if he'd been here, could have impersonated Rasputin to a tee, just like -"

"Unstoffe! Will you please stop wasting these good robot's time and get on with it? You're practically finished!"

"Please sit, Doctor," said Bob Name Your Poison, "We do not require your input."

"Now, Peter Unstoffe," said Bob What a Deal, "Please continue. You were saying?"

"Sorry, Bobs. What I was saying won't help you regain control of Rallax. My mind was just wandering. Won't happen again.

"We were talking about how to conquer Red Revolution, but I was wondering why we were bothering...

"Of course..." I ventured, "we could do nothing."

Seeing their expressions, I added, "I'm serious. Aren't we trying to find your ship and escape, Doctor? Why get involved here when we're in a hurry? Just hack the schematics in the console there and find us a way to the surface."

"You're forgetting something, Unstoffe," said Spidrick. "This is the first revolution since Yaka became captain of the guard. He's armed the Cossacks with swords and they haven't the wit to question their orders. Thousands will die unless we act!"

"Oh, that damned Yaka!" I said. "Why is it always the least qualified who seek power?"

"As far as Yaka's concerned he is qualified. Don't forget, he was in the line of succession. Way down there, but a royal, nonetheless. Still, he'd be a miserable administrator. All he really enjoys is shouting down at people."

On the screen, Rasputin, the Tsar, eight deer and the imperial guard were leaving Yaka alone in the throne room. He bowed stiffly until they were gone.

The princess said, "Don't forget, we control the Cossacks. If we tell them not to kill..."

"The regulars are also armed with swords..."

"But if Yaka's out of the picture they'll obey the royals..."

"I'm not convinced of that. He's kept them well-supplied with women and vodka..."

"Then Yaka himself will have to give the order to stand down," said the Doctor, "and he has to be persuaded to do so... "

"No he doesn't," I said.

On the throne room monitor I saw Yaka gazing at the empty throne, hands clenched.

"Just look at him," I said. "Doesn't he look sad? Let's give him what he wants."

Directly east from the former Tsar's palace, deep in the forest, at the end of a wide trail, is a clearing at the base of the Western cliff. There is no stairway to the stars here – that was a secondary entry for staff. Instead, a grand waterfall fills a deep clear pool. A road runs behind it and the rock wall there lifts on a pivot. Beyond is the Garden Highway.

This is where Spidrick made his failed escape attempt.

To the north the land turns to frozen tundra and icy seas. To the south rears an unscaled range of mountains.

To the East lie vast stretches of grey prairie broken only by crumbling colossi, meandering black rivers and the occasional grim village. The only light in this dismal landscape reflected from the silver tracks of the railroad. Belching black smoke, we rode east. The Doctor never left the engine; all through the day we heard his whoops, carried back by the wind. The princess and I shared a carriage. We talked, but not about anything important. Once, she visited the new Tsar, Yaka, who rode with his silent Cossack guard in the coach ahead; he was seething with impotent rage. Spidrick had stayed behind to explain the new regime to his followers while the new Tsar 'inspected the provinces'.

We arrived at the Eastern sea an hour before dawn. The cossacks were given final orders and the train returned to the west. We found the docks and the sailboats moored there. The princess had skill with rope and canvas and soon we were gliding across the still waters.

We sailed into the sunrise and came to the wall of the world. A blue tunnel, invisible against the sky, led to an interior dock. We scraped the mold and salt crust from the machinery there and the Doctor went to work. He finished as the light of the setting sun filled the room with warm light and shadows. "They call this the magic hour," said the Doctor, throwing a switch. A platform hummed. "Presto!"

"Is it safe?" I wondered, "I don't want to appear a mile above ground."

"No, it's all fixed. Perfectly safe. Stand right there and I'll show you."

"Doctor, 'stand right there'?"

"Never mind, Peter, I'll be the penny hog," said the princess.

"I'm only kidding! We all go," said the Doctor, extending both elbows so we could take his arms. "_Allons-y_!"

We took one step toward the transmat when the green light turned puce and the pitch changed.

"There's someone coming through!" cried the princess.

"Can you stop it, Doctor?"

"Yes, but why would we want to? We've been kicking around the basement long enough! It's time to go upstairs and-"

Three figures in battle armor appeared on the platform. More or less in tandem, three large blasters were leveled at us.

"- meet the landlords."

I sat back and pretended to study my fingernails. Bob Name your Poison looked at his partners.

"Wait! Are you done?" he asked me.

"Hmm? Of course I am. The three of you brought us up here, locked us up and interrogated us. Story over. Told you everything I know."

"But what happened to Yaka? Why is he the Tsar and why did the princess kiss him?" asked Bob What a Deal.

"Are you in love now?" Bob Sunny Day wanted to know.

I suddenly adored these idiot machines and wondered if I could keep them. "I'm pleased you've become so engrossed in the story-"

"Oh, yes, yours was the best. The Doctor has no sense of continuity and the princess kept explaining her emotional state. She likes you, by the way but isn't sure you meet her male ideal as exemplified by her father."

"Oh, that's very kind of you to say. But aren't you forgetting something?"

"How did the princess know about the tunnels? She told us."

"No. Have you forgotten the entire reason we had this little chat?"

"Why we are being attacked by Cossacks and humans? You haven't explained that."

"No, the other thing. Think 'slabby'."

They held a silent conference as gunfire erupted outside, surely a mere corridor or two away.

Bob Name your Poison leaped to his feet. "Registry! You've told us where to find the ship's registry!"

"They aren't half dim, aren't they?" murmured the Doctor.

The inaudible conference recommenced. I turned to the others and smiled. The Doctor had been running his sonic on stealth mode and the verifier had let some whoppers pass. Well, no, that's not quite true. Just been a few strategic omissions, is all. You have my complete assurance that over ninety percent of what I told the robots is true.

I realized they were now staring at me. "Yes?"

"To verify – One must travel in a western direction from transmat station Red Revolution 2212 to the Garden Highway 47 exit 4550G, exiting through filtration vent GN-78463, proceed in a rightward direction down to the termination point of Intercell Maintenance Corridor 12,675H? This is correct? This is where we will find the unfortunate Mr. Garron?"

I heard a rapidly intensifying beeping just outside the door. The princess and the Doctor ducked and covered. "Well, I suppose you could go to all that trouble," I quickly said as I dove for the floor. The door concussed off its frame and knocked the robots flat. A figure in full Levithian armor strode into the room through the billowing smoke.

"Then again," he said, removing his helmet, "I suppose I can spare you the effort."

"It's the Graff Vynda-K!" came an awed whisper, quickly shushed, from under the wreckage.

"Garron!" I cried. Unaccountably overjoyed, I leaped to my feet and embraced him.

"Stop that, boy, you're spoiling my entrance!"

The princess laughed.

"You took your sweet time," said the Doctor, "How many bloody hints did you need?"

Martial music swelled and someone else stepped into the room and looked around wonderingly. "I abjure you not to dishonor Mr. Garron. He showed great fortitude as he lay with this spear transfixing his magic pocket."

"Chief! You made it!"

"Evidently, observant one. Greetings and thank you again, my savior."

"Please, I couldn't let that hatch cut you in half, could I? Besides, you've more than repaid the debt, sitting with Garron that whole time, holding the spear steady."

A weak voice drifted from under the door. "Mr. Garron is not dead? What infamy is this, Peter Gulliver Unstoffe?"

"Infamy? _Infamy_?" said Garron, "I'll hear no talk of infamy! You've been conned, my dim-witted plastic friends, fair and square."

"Conned?" said Bob What a Deal.

Garron peered down at him. "Yes, conned. Tricked. Fooled. Deceived. Swindled. Defrauded."

"Garron, please," I said. "I'm sorry, Bobs, but it had to be done. Surely you understand. Now we can save Rallax. Come on, up off the floor with you. Help us."

"You're too soft for this work, boy. I've said it before."

The three Robots, servos whirring, painfully struggled to their feet. The chief leveled the singing spear at them. "Make no hostile moves, bloodless ones," he said, "We require your cooperation." They meekly raised their hands. Bob Sunny Day's nose dropped off and he sighed.

"We surrender," he said.

All right. I suppose a bit of explanation is in order. As you've guessed, the chief didn't plummet to his death. Maybe I am too soft, like Garron says. I don't know. It's not as if I made a decision, you understand. I hauled him to safety without a thought for my own. But the universe likes a fool, I suppose, because the chief then demonstrated that even the most primitive Draconian has a hide of honor. He swore an oath to repay his debt and to follow my orders until then. Well okay, I thought.

I didn't expect the debt to be discharged so suddenly, though.

Garron sat against the wall of the corridor, as I said before, but he was far from dead. Sure looked like he wished he was, though. He was pale and sweating. The princess stood away, looking as if she might bolt at any second. The Doctor was urging Garron to keep still while he made readings with his screwdriver. "Don't move a micrometer," he said, "or that shaft is going to touch the edge and short out the tesseract's safety protocols. You know what that means. You did read the manual, I hope."

"I regret to say that this is, in fact, a second-hand tesseract and the manual was not included in the, shall we say, transaction," said Garron, "but yes, I know what will happen."

I was horrified. The shaft protruded from his chest a mere arm's length, a tiny corona of sparkling energy at the entry point. I immediately guessed what had happened. Garron had ordered the tesseract to close at the same instance the chief threw the spear. The tesseract's safety features worked as advertized and the portal did not close around the spear. So far, so good.

"But this genius didn't follow basic maintenance routines and the tesseract developed a leak," the Doctor said, "Now the portal rim is supercharged with negative void energy. If that spear touches the sides it will act as a conduit to the positive void inside."

"Won't they short each other out?" I asked.

"They'll equalize, Unstoffe. Implosively."

"Oh. Can you fix it?"

The Doctor frowned. "Maybe. What I mean is, I have all the readings I need to create a sonic pulse that will dampen the negative void ring and allow the spear to be removed."

"That's wonderful! Do it, then!"

"Thing is, I need either a quantum computer or the equipment on my ship to compute the exact frequency. One micro-octave off either way and..."

The chief surprised us all. "Do I understand correctly that the fat one's invisible pouch will kill us all if the spear is moved?"

"That's right, chief."

"But you have the means to save us if you are allowed to leave this place?"

"Yesss..."

"Then I will stay with him. My hand threw the spear. My hand will hold it steady."

Was that pride in the Doctor's nod? "Thank you, Chief. You are a true son of Draconia. We'll be back as soon as we can."

I've never been fond of retracing my steps.

"Doctor," I asked, "Could we transmit the frequency? Even if we weren't here?"

"If we had a receiver, sure."

"Garron and I have a set of communicators."

Garron groaned, "Had. Had a set. One of those savages nicked mine."

"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. Say, wait a minute."

I'd recently seen something, somewhere, hadn't I? Ah!

"Chief, I need your headband."

We synchronized the frequencies of chief's headband and my communicator. The Doctor fiddled with both and declared we had a constant, clean connection. Garron would hear everything that happened to us and when the time came we could transmit the pulse from anywhere (from orbit, I hoped). The only thing the Doctor couldn't do, frustratingly, was allow Garron to transmit to us. "I'm a genius, no doubt," he said, "but even I can't fix a microphone after someone's stuck a decorative feather through it."

Did you wonder at the coincidence of our meeting the Graff's men on a ship the size of a small planet? Well, don't. As we left Garron the Doctor picked up two transponder signals matching the Graff's signature. He didn't tell us, so we didn't know we weren't wandering. We were following a signal we hoped would lead us out.

In the Garden Highway the Doctor disabled the vents and repaired two transpods.

In the palace control room he programmed the Royals to abdicate after proclaiming Yaka the new Tsar. The Cossacks were programmed to never leave Yaka unattended and to kill him immediately if he made a single selfish or non-humanitarian decree, the compilation of which was a lengthy process.

A swift motorcar was dispatched to wait at the western waterfall.

From the eastern sea the train was sent back to await Garron's arrival.

In the secret chamber under the wall of the world the Doctor finally managed to access Rallax's central computer. He set it to work analyzing his tesseract readings.

In his cell, after the Bobs captured us, he hacked into the computer again. The information wasn't ready. We had to stall.

Near the end of my first interrogation we sent the signal, the chief removed the spear and Garron was saved. Now it was his turn to save us.

And he did. He and Spidrick were soon leading a waiting army of Cossacks, bears and adventurous Bolsheviks out of the only land they'd known and beyond the sky. They'd battled the robots (who, truthfully, showed a marked tendency toward surrender) through corridors and compartments, gaining deck by deck, until reaching our location in Auxiliary Control. Then, on the communicator and through the door, Garron heard me say, "Well, I suppose you could go to all that trouble."

"We surrender'" said Bob Sunny Day and his nose dropped off. "Oh, pardon me!" he said, retrieving the stray organ, "I seem to have been damaged in Mr. Garron's melodramatic entrance. As we are now category 2 compatriots, may I excuse myself to the repair bay?"

"Is this really the time for vanity, Bob Sunny Day?" said Bob Name Your Poison.

"No, no. Go ahead, Bob. In fact, Bob and Bob – why don't you accompany Bob? You're all looking a bit discom_bob_ulated," said the Doctor. After offering polite assurances to rejoin us soon, the robots trudged off.

No one spoke after they left. I suppose there should have been cheers, handshakes and if I was lucky a kiss or two. We'd won, hadn't we? We should be celebrating. But the chief settled on his haunches, the princess and Garron sank into chairs and even the tireless Doctor leaned on a support column. Spidrick entered the room, nodded to us and found a bench.

I felt I should say something but, gentlemen, I was well and truly talked out. Instead I settled against a wall and removed my Crewbooties, enjoying the feeling of cool metal on tired feet.

I could almost taste the quiet, the commonplace sounds of a functioning ship. Unstoffe, I said to myself, you have to get up. There's still so much to do. But Unstoffe, I countered, I could happily seclude myself in a Lull-D-Sack for a week. No, food first. Then a shower with real water.

"Oh, a shower!" said the princess, "that sounds wonderful."

Garron chuckled. "He does this when he's tired. You're doing it again."

My embarrassment faded when I saw no malice in their eyes, just weary understanding.

"Young Unstoffe is right!" said the Doctor.

Garron groaned. "Yes, I suppose we should conclude this welcome siesta and return to the task at hand."

"What?" said the Doctor, "With all due respect for your new found and mildly worrisome sense of responsibility, Garron, I'm always famished after conquering a planet. Let's round up a Bob and find the canteen."

It was a nice dinner. The bobs were pleased to reinstall their old programming and Bob Name Your Poison turned out to be quite the alchemist. Our collective poisons kept him happily engaged as we plotted our next moves.

First and foremost, the Doctor insisted, we had to retrieve his capsule from orbit. Our next step, returning stability to Rallax, depended on the equipment inside. Bob Sunny Day, smart new nose firmly attached, mentioned that a nearby cargo dock was equipped with tow beams, so that was sorted. The Doctor was eager to be off but we prevailed upon him to explain what we needed to do.

"Well, we have to disable the warp engines, and to do that we need the ship's registry to reinstall the data and cognizance core. Remember how I couldn't access the main computer from the palace control room? Well, it's like that all over this ship. Hardly any of the millions of systems are talking to each other. Once we install the registry, they will. You do still have it, Garron?"

Garron tapped his chest. "Right here, Doctor."

"And you can still access your tesseract?"

"Where do you think these fine olives came from?"

"Anglesey."

"Oh! A fellow _connoisseur_?" Garron rubbed his hands briskly and leaned forward. "That's a good guess, considering you haven't even eaten one. Yes, while many opine that the tartness of an Andalusian olive..."

Oh, dear gods of alcohol. We didn't have time for one of Garron's discourses on olives. Hadn't he already begged and cajoled until everyone except the Doctor had eaten one?

"Not now, Garron." He looked hurt. "I know you're an expert and I'm sure everyone would find it compelling and I'm sorry but I think we should hear the Doctor's plan."

"Why thank you, Unstoffe. Anyway, all we'll need to do is crack the security protocols and we'll deal with that when the time comes."

"Excuse me," said the chief, who was drinking something out of a reconstituted pineapple, "but what are these 'security protocols'?"

"You see, chief, a ship's registry is more than just a brain. It's also an ideally tamper-proof record of ownership," I said, "Think of it as the ship's totem."

"Ah. And the ship's spirits will only speak with their master's leave?"

"So much smarter than humans," murmured the Doctor. "That's it exactly, chief. Top marks."

Bob Sunny Day set another platter down. "And then we will be safe? We will not become a star?"

"Not automatically, no. That's where you lot come in."

"Sir?"

"The ship's auto-repair systems will fix some faults but the broken circuits will need hands-on repair. That's you. I'll have to alter your programming a bit. Show you what to do. Then you can start recruiting survivors from the recreation cells to help. Start with that lot over there," he said, meaning a nearby table of drunken Bolsheviks. "They'll pick it up, train others. You've plenty of time."

"We'll do our best, sir."

"'Course you will," said the Doctor. He rose from the table. "Me, I'm off to the cargo hold. I'll see you all in the morning. Try not to stay up late."

Not long after, Garron insisted I help him to bed.

"Come right back," said the princess, "I may need your help, too."

I hauled Garron to his feet, swearing he'd gained weight. The old man was quiet on the way to the his commandeered stateroom. But when we reached it he seemed recovered.

"You know," he said, "I think I may go for a little stroll instead. There are interesting opportunities here, don't you think?"

"I think you're going to get us in trouble. That's what I think."

"Oh, I'd say you have that well in hand yourself."

"What do you mean?"

"I'm not really drunk, boy."

"I know."

"That's not all you need to know. And for what it's worth, I'm sorry."

He produced a pair of ear buds and a tuning device.

"Here," he said. "Let's see what our friends are up to, shall we?"

If ignorance is bliss, then the past few days were the happiest of my life.

When I returned to the canteen two harried Bobs in medical white were carrying out the chief, who was swiping at them playfully from his stretcher. He winked at me as they passed.

Bob Sunny Day sprawled at the bar, looking for all the world like an exhausted _maitre d_ after a space regatta _soiree_. Bob Name Your Poison polished glasses behind him (It fleetingly occurred to me I hadn't seen Bob What a Deal since the three had left for the repair bay. Maybe he was busy reopening the duty-free?). Other than the two 'bots, the canteen was abandoned.

Where was the princess? The 'bots didn't know. They hadn't seen her leave. I ran through the empty corridors to her stateroom. She didn't respond to the call button. Her door was unsealed.

Inside, the only light was a flickering wall monitor displaying the nearest parking dock's manifest. Her bed was not slept in. Her few belongings were missing.

A passing Bob gave me directions, adding that the Princess and a man in armour had passed this way. They'd been with two Cossacks who were carrying a sick man he didn't recognize.

In the immense parking dock I ran past hundreds of ships, scarcely noticing their exotic contours. My destination was the small, sleek cruiser under the cavernous bay's only bright light. I closed the distance, straining too hard to shout, as two large figures carried a burden up the ramp and disappeared inside.

I crashed to a halt at the base of the ramp, supported myself on the handrails and wheezed like an old bear. A dark female silhouette appeared in the hatchway. "Took you long enough," it said.

"Princess... why?"

She stepped back into the light. She'd changed into a practical coverall and tied her hair. Her eyes glittered.

"Get on board, Unstoffe, if you're coming."

I climbed up the ramp and stepped into the fanciest ship I'd ever seen, but I was immediately distracted from the posh interior by three things. The first was Garron, trussed up, gagged and sprawled on the deck. The second was the pair of Cossacks standing guard over him. The third was the sharp click and whine that told me a blaster was charging an inch from my ear.

"You remember dear Yaka, don't you, Unstoffe?"

"Hullo, Yaka."

"Greetings, boy. My mistress informs me I am not to kill you. Why is that, I wonder? Have we unfinished business, you and I?"

"Your breath stinks of onions. Would you mind terribly?"

"Do not be impertinent with me, cub. You, I suspect, do not fully comprehend your situation."

His mad eyes rolled toward the princess. "Can it be you have no idea who this woman truly is?"

I gave him my best supercilious smirk and dismissive wave combo. "Don't be a fool. She's the Mongoose, Alliance Security's greatest secret operative."

This was the truth. She was a cop.

"I've known for ages," I added, with a dismissive wave.

This was a lie, by the way; Garron had told me a few hours ago, but I'd be damned if I let Yaka know that. Garron had known since he found her on the _Indomitable Prince_, though not by any extraordinary insight; someone had taped a sign over her cryo-sleeve..

I thought I saw regret cross her face but it didn't linger.

"Oh fine, you know," she said, "it doesn't matter."

She told Garron, "I'm going to count to ten. If you don't agree to follow my instructions to the letter, Yaka there is going to execute your employee. Do you understand?"

Garron nodded.

"Do you agree to cooperate?"

Garron paused, then shook his head.

Outside in the parking bay, far away, something clattered.

"Investigate!" ordered Yaka, "Whoever it is, gut them."

The Mongoose watched the Cossacks go. Incidentally, I've no idea what happened to them and I've forgotten to ask. I did spot Bob What a Deal sporting a fur coat, so maybe you should ask him. Anyway, the princess, that is, the Mongoose, started counting.

"One."

I couldn't believe this was the girl with whom I'd shared so many adventures. We'd talked. We'd smiled. We'd _cuddled_. She'd beaten me at my own game and that was irritating but okay. I'd been fooled before. But never this completely. Garron was a rank amateur compared to her, and I was a rank amateur compared to him. She was the complete and utter deal. The perfect con. I'd gazed into her eyes and utterly believed she was who she claimed.

"Two."

Imagine! The perfect con was a rhino!

But that wasn't the worst of it. She'd put me in my place, made me look at myself and there, looking back, were all those people _I'd_ lied to and cheated.

"Three!"

Damn her!

"Oh, don't look so indignant, Unstoffe. With the Graff dead Garron was next on my checklist. I can't begin to imagine how two inept, two-bit hustlers such as yourselves managed it but you've earned quite a reputation. Alliance Security will be well pleased; I might even get a promotion for this. 'Captain The Mongoose.' I like it!"

God help me, she was_ adorable_.

"Four."

"Why do you persist on making this arrest?" Yaka wanted to know. "After the fat one gives us the registry we need only install it, persuade that Doctor to effect repairs and then, with this mighty ship at my command, I will retake Levithia in the name of the Vynda dynasty and make you my Queen!"

"Five, six. I'm arresting them because it's my job, you imperialist oaf! What makes you think I want to marry you, anyway? Honestly, I can't stand you. The thought of marrying you."

"Your words were lies?"

Oh, brother. "Excuse me? I hate to interrupt this lover's spat..."

"Unstoffe, don't call us that. I have never, ever..."

"There is no need to tell him that!"

Considerably cheered, I continued. "As I was trying to say, aren't you both forgetting something? Something rather important to the success of _your_ plans and _your_ career?"

"Seven!"

"We forgot to gag you, I'll own."

"No, you lugs. My goodness, it's so obvious."

"Eight, nine. What? What's so obvious?"

"_We warped_."

Yaka stared at me blankly, but comprehension and something else, relief or hope, dawned on the princess's face. I could actually see all her doubt drop away and her loyalties shift.

I continued, speaking seriously but laughing inside. "We could be anywhere in time and space. There is no Cyrrhenic Alliance Security. There is no Levithian Throne. Don't you see? It's all gone or it hasn't happened yet."

I looked right into the princess's eyes and tied the knot. "All we have is each other."

Yaka roared and struck my jaw with the blaster. I fell hard and the former Mongoose knelt and cradled my head.

"I'm so sorry." She smoothed my hair. "I convinced Yaka the best way to find the surface was to follow the Doctor. I wanted to arrest you, he wanted to take command of Rallax. We faked that bit below the palace, knew you'd survive. Didn't expect you to take so long to figure it out, though. Sure as hell didn't expect you to blow yourself up. That was very gallant."

Well, who was I to contradict her? Especially as she was kissing me? On, might I add, the lips?

"How did he escape the Cossacks?" I asked, more weakly than I actually felt.

"Shhh. I just added a line to their command list so he could convince them that finding the exit was in the country's best interests. He followed Spidrick and Garron up through the levels, contacted me here. You know the rest." She frowned. "Somehow."

I gazed at her, as soulfully as I could. "Are you... still going to arrest us?"

"No. I'm through being an agent. It wasn't about the law anyway. It was about tricking people and collecting bounties. Truth be told, I've been making a fortune on the side."

"I can appreciate that. So, what about Chuckles, there?"

She gazed at him, her eyes cold and steely, and didn't say a word. Didn't have to.

Yaka saw how it was. He sneered. "It is of no matter! I shall forge my own empire! And I shall possess dozens of queens!"

He turned to Garron and kicked him. "I count 'ten', bald one. Open your tesseract "

Garron nodded, snapped his fingers and the shimmer appeared.

Yaka leered in anticipation. "I shall regret killing you, Mongoose, false though you be. As for you two, I intend..."

Well, I guessed his intention and didn't mind not hearing it.

The reason I didn't hear it was because just then the registry, all solid memory plastic, burst out and smashed his face. It flew with such force it literally knocked him off his feet. His blaster skidded toward the princess and she grabbed it. "Don't move a muscle, Dan Dravot."

I appreciated her literary reference, but Yaka merely goggled.

"But... but how..."

She smiled brightly at me. "Talking counts as moving, wouldn't you agree?"

I nodded and she shot him. "Still," she said, "It's not a bad question to ask."

"Worse, I think, to furnish the answer," said a familiar Draconian voice.

The chief, neatly bisected by the faint shimmer above Garron's chest, looked a bit queasy. "That was quite a throw," I said as we pulled him out.

"Did I kill him?"

"No."

"Did she?"

"No, he's still breathing. Anyone else in there?"

"Yes, the ones called 'Spidrick' and 'Doctor'."

"Good grief, Garron."

With the chief's help we extricated Spidrick and the Doctor. Garron gestured and the shimmer shrunk to a point and vanished.

"Well, as devious plans go, that was a doozy," said the Doctor. "Still, though," he said, as I removed Garron's gag, "I'm still not sure why all three of us had to be in there."

Garron smiled innocently from the floor. "Always have a plan 'B', Doctor."

"Hmm. Maybe I should leave you tied up."

"Oh, very droll. Perhaps -"

Another echoing crash came from outside. The Doctor took a reading, frowned mightily at the result and said, "Oh, that's not good. That's so not good!"

He grabbed the ship's registry. "We can't wait until morning."

"What's the matter, Doctor?" I asked, dreading and suspecting the answer.

"The gravity cascade. It's starting now! If we warp again Rallax is finished!"

"What do we do?"

"Oh, I don't know! Die? No! I have to get the ship online!"

He dashed out, carrying the registry. Rooted to the spot, we watched him go.

Now what? I untied Garron in silence and hauled him to his feet.

"What do we do?" I asked.

The princess cleared her throat and said, "We _are_ in a spaceship."

Garron grinned. "Oh, you are lovely."

"Are you both mad?" I cried, "We can't leave all those people to die!"

Oh, wait. What was I saying?

"I mean... can we?"

"I, for one, am willing to run the risk of subsequent, crippling guilt if I am alive to enjoy it," said Garron, "Who's with me? Chief?"

"Oh, friend, where is your honor? Did you not listen to my songs? I go to help the Doctor."

"I had no choice," said Garron as the chief mournfully turned and followed the Doctor.

Garron shook his head. "What about you, Spidrick? An honorable death?"

"I don't know..."

"I'll come back to you, then. What about you two?"

The princess was looking up at me, measuring me with her eyes. The deck shuddered as a minor shipquake rumbled below but her gaze didn't waver. With mild astonishment I realized she would do whatever I decided. We could escape and live. That was a certainty. But could we be happy together, could we bear ourselves, wondering if staying here could have made a difference?

On the other hand, if we tried to help the Doctor we faced a path fraught with uncertainty. Maybe we could help, though I couldn't see how. The millions might be saved, but looking down at her, I didn't think it was worth the risk.

She might die, and she was worth more than all the others.

"Boy? We have to go." said Spidrick.

A weak voice drifted from the floor. Yaka. "Listen to the fat one. He alone of you speaks wisdom."

"Don't agree with me!" said Garron.

"But I do... one's own life is one's only true duty..."

Another quake, stronger this time, rattled the deck. Somewhere metal twisted and moaned.

"Princess," I said, "Hand me that blaster, please."

Wordlessly but with a glance at Yaka, she complied. I checked the setting, made an adjustment.

"You need to shut up," I told Yaka.

Then I shot the Princess. I caught her before she hit the deck.

"Garron," I said, "you and Spidrick get this ship moving. Get her away from here." I placed the princess on a lounger, kissed her forehead and moved to the hatch.

"Good-bye, Garron. Try not to miss me," I said as I clanked down the ramp.

I'd taken twenty laborious steps from the ship when I heard Garron call my name. He had Yaka by the scruff of his neck and was dragging the weakly struggling soldier down the ramp.

"Well, come on, then! Don't just stand there! I'm too old to carry him myself!"

"Garron!"

"There, that service cart. Hurry, now!"

"But Garron..."

"Don't worry. See, Spidrick's got the ship in the air already. She'll be fine."

"That's wonderful! But Garron..."

"Boy, if my plan works we will never, ever speak of it again. I have a reputation to think of. Do you understand me? Never again!"

I looked at his crafty, dear old face and said the first thing that popped in my mind.

"I love you, Garron."

"Shut up, son."

The Doctor, surrounded by a small army of Bobs, wailed, "No!" as we entered the Auxiliary Control Room. Not because we'd arrived, mind. It was because he was sure he was about to die. That crash we'd heard earlier was was a girder blocking the tow beam controls; without the tow beam he couldn't retrieve the Tardis, and without the Tardis he couldn't break the Registry's encryption, and without a working registry the ship was about to warp again, almost certainly tearing itself to pieces.

The chief saw us and shook the Doctor's shoulder. He looked at us quizzically, frowning at Yaka on the cart. The Bobs parted as we joined them.

"Are you mad? Why are you here? This place is going to warp any second and she won't survive the trip!" said the Doctor.

"Well then, Doctor," said Garron, "you'd be advised to initialize the registry, wouldn't you?"

"Don't you think I've been trying? Without the Tardis I can't communicate with it!"

"Well, you'd better ask the owner to do it, shouldn't you?"

The Doctor stared at Yaka. "What do you mean?" he said to Garron.

"I mean Crewman Colepit, Doctor."

Four deep, resounding knocks echoed through the room. The Doctor gibbered for a second but regained control.

"C'mon, Garron! This is no time to be cryptic!"

"Fine. Spidrick told me. This man isn't who he thinks he is. Standard Levithian practice. Clone your offspring, then have a relative raise them as their own. If the original dies, transfer his memory."

"Even if that's true..."

"I studied the ship's log on the _Indomitable Prince_, Doctor. She spent three weeks on Aye Aye before she traveled to Ribos. You know what they do on Aye Aye, don't you?"

I yelled, "Do you Bobs have image alteration software?" Some of them did. I hauled Yaka to a sitting position. "Scan this man's face! Remove his beard, trim his mustache and cut his hair. Oh, and ignore the broken nose. Extrapolate!"

Within seconds the awed chorus arose.

"The Graff Vynda-K!"

The Doctor grinned at Garron. Yaka looked puzzled for a moment, then his jaw dropped.

Garron beamed. "I wasn't sure what he'd been doing on Aye Aye until Spidrick – he was his secret minder, hired by the family – told me the story just minutes ago."

I pulled Yaka to his feet and with the chief's help got him to the registry plinth. "Put your hand right there, Graff, and say 'initialize'."

"And what if I refuse?"

The warp siren sounded. The Doctor looked around, his eyes wide.

"Well, we all die. But you... well, see the Bobs?"

The Bobs had massed tightly around us, every pair of eyes on Yaka. Suddenly there was nothing comic about their bland faces. They exuded menace, and I'm glad they weren't looking at me that way.

"If you don't help us," said the Doctor, "we give you to them first."

Yaka gulped.

"Besides," said Garron, "who was it who said, 'one's own life is one's only true duty'?"

Another rumble passed below, the worst one yet. Sparks exploded from a nearby console. Just do it, I thought, sizing up the exit.

Yaka knew he was beaten. He nodded, placed his hand on the plinth and said, "Initialize" The control room lit up and systems hummed to life around us. The Doctor sprang to action. I couldn't begin to tell you what he did; he was a dazzling blur as he raced from console to console. But the vibrations subsided, the alarm was silenced and finally he looked satisfied. He wiped his forehead and grinned weakly.

"Doctor?" I asked. "Is that it? Is Rallax safe now?"

He shook his head sadly. "I'm sorry, but no. We're stable now; Rallax will never warp again. But she's still dying. Every forest, every mountain, every living thing. The gravity is still increasing exponentially. Notice how heavy you feel?"

"What? I thought the automatic repair systems -"

"Too late for that, I'm afraid."

"Then what's the point? What have we really done?"

"What we've done, Unstoffe, is give everyone some time to escape. You Bobs can contact the other parts of Rallax now. Tell whoever will listen to climb up until they reach the parking bays. We're back in your own time and I'm sure a rescue fleet is on its way."

Garron, who'd been quietly accessing a small monitor, cleared his throat.

"What is it, Garron?"

"Actually, Doctor, all is not lost. Opportunities arise in unusual times, I always say. For example, have a look at this. A little bit of contemporary salvage law..."

The Doctor studied the screen and shook his head.

"Garron, I see what you mean but Rallax is dying within days. What do you intend to accomplish with this?"

I couldn't see what they were looking at and Garron winked when he saw my interest. He addressed the assembled Bobs. I studied the screen and felt hope.

"Are you aware, my plastic friends, that by the laws of this century you are all, part and parcel, now the property of the Graff Vynda-K? Oh, don't try to deny your identity, man, you didn't earlier and they all heard you. Bobs! This is the man responsible for exacerbating your already significant woes!

"Tell me, are you willing to serve him?"

The Bobs chorused, 'No!"

"You'd rather kill him, wouldn't you?"

The response was less than unanimous, but the majority carried the day.

"Well, then. If I told you I could free you all from his odious employ, would you be willing to let the Graff live?"

As the Bobs silently debated, Garron spoke to Yaka. "You are well and truly finished unless you agree to the proposal I am about to make."

Yaka watched the Bobs. "What do you want me to do?" he weakly asked.

"You need to put your hand right there and say 'transfer ownership'. Do that, and we'll save you from the Bobs. You can go back below and be Tsar. Best deal you're going to get all day."

"Make them swear an oath."

"Bobs," cried Garron, "do you swear to leave this man, the Graff Vynda-K, unmolested?"

They swore.

Sighing, diminished, Yaka did it.

Time stood still.

Garron stood at the plinth, dithering. He looked at me, a single drop of sweat running down his face. Slowly he raised his hand, held it before the registry..."

"And then he placed the hand of Bob What A Deal on the plinth! Yes, we know!"

The Chief Executive of the Parallax Corporation was livid. "Honestly, do you have any idea what you've done?"

Garron and Unstoffe grinned at each other. "Yes, we know," said Garron. "We passed the ownership of a legally salvaged vessel to a deserving entity."

"But you could have claimed it for yourself!"

"Oh, that would be far too much work. I'm content to collect a small consultation fee."

"Besides, those little Bobs kept your precious Rallax together as best they could for over seven hundred years," said Unstoffe, "No one deserves it more than they."

"But they aren't sentient! They're only Bobs! They can't own property! They _are_ property!"

"That's where you're wrong. The report from Branbridge was released this afternoon. You haven't seen it? The Bots have been declared sentient. Long-term cosmic ray exposure, you know."

"Those damned sociologists." muttered the Chief Executive's counsel.

"I wouldn't be too hard on them," said Unstoffe, "besides, it's like the Doctor said; the sociologists can't wait to get their teams into Rallax. If you agree to buy, you'll make a fortune from them alone, not to mention the millions you'll make from scavenging that dwarf alloy."

"About that alloy," said the chief engineer, "it's all still there in the center, correct? Inside that tesseract device?"

"And safely enclosed in the void space, yes. It's far to dense and heavy to transmat directly, so at my suggestion," said Garron, "the Doctor rigged the transmat and built a remote control. It was tricky work, but he managed it. We transmitted the tesseract, opened it at the center and now the dangerous alloy is safely cut off from the rest of Rallax."

"Inside the tesseract, where its gravitational pull can do no further harm?" asked the chief engineer.

"Of course," said Garron, "and it's yours for the taking, though I wouldn't want to wait too long before you extract it. You can keep the tesseract, by the way. My loss is part of the settlement. Those olives with the tiny transmitters were irreplaceable."

"Transmitters! That's how you knew..."

"Yes. We heard the princess and Yaka hatch their plan."

"But she was terribly conflicted," added Unstoffe.

"But that's not important, gentlemen. Yes, it will be costly, but this is your only sensible move," said Garron.

"Face it, despite the repair bills, the class-action lawsuits, the disavowal from the Historian's Guild and the fines from Empire Standards and Practices, you're still going to come out ahead. All you have to do is accept Bob's price, agree to an equal partnership and you'll all be set for life," said Unstoffe.

"Refuse," added Garron, "and instead of magnanimous heroes you will be abhorred as base villains. By my projections, you will be bankrupt in a year. I repeat – accepting Bob's offer is your only sensible alternative."

The chief executive frowned. "You will excuse us while we discuss your offer."

"Of course," said Garron.

As the most powerful executives on Earth conferred in private, Garron & Unstoffe shared a smile. The Chief executive and his cronies returned to the table.

"Let me ask you something. That Doctor, where is he?"

"No idea. As soon as he'd retrieved his ship he transferred the tesseract to the center of the planet. He visited the shop, muttered something about chickens and then he and the Tardis just faded away."

"And you? What do you get out of this? Will you have a role in Bob What A Day's organization?"

"No, sir," said Unstoffe, "we're just his realtors."

Garron & Unstoffe walked back to their ship. It was too nice a day for a taxi. Great towers reached the sky around them but they were not awed in the least.

"How did it go?" asked the Princess, "Did they agree to it?"

"Well, my dear, they said we'll know tomorrow, but they're just stalling. They're trapped and they know it. If they relinquish their responsibility for the disaster of the century their stock will plummet. It will be the end for them. But if they are seen helping the poor, simple Bobs, they will be able to spin public opinion their way. Not to mention the profit from selling off that alloy. Yes, they're going to pay." Garron looked well pleased.

"Sir," said Spidrick, who was painting 'Connie 2' on their cruiser, "the port authority was around again."

"Fear not, though," said the chief, "I saw them off."

"Oh, I hope you didn't hurt anyone too badly. Was it the licensing again? Those confounded bureaucrats! Is it our fault that we haven't renewed for 200,000 years?"

"Actually, according to my research we don't even exist," said Connie.

"Yes," said Garron thoughtfully, "And by this time tomorrow we'll be reasonably well-off." He gazed at the towers across the water and the stars emerging overhead. They had a lot to learn, but not as much as he'd feared. Empires, fortunes, technologies and cultures had risen and fallen many times but seemed to always settle on nearly the same level. These people weren't all that advanced from those of his time.

"About that," he said. "Has anyone considered what an advantage nonexistence could be to a small band of enterprising businessmen?"

Then Garron turned and raised a speculative eyebrow at the apprentice, the princess, the soldier and the noble savage.

Unstoffe chuckled softly.

"Is it safe to assume, sir, that we haven't retired?"


End file.
